English infinitive 9780582071353, 0582071356

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EN G LISH LA N G U A G E SER IES TITLE NO 19

T he English infinitive

E N G L IS H L A N G U A G E S E R IE S G eneral E d ito r: R a n d o lp h Q u irk

Title no.: 1 David Crystal and Derek Davy 2 THE M OVEM ENT OF ENGLISH PROSE Ian A. G ordon LINGUISTIC GUIDE TO ENGLISH POETRY 4 Geoffrey N. Leech A N IN T R O D U C T IO N TO 7 INVESTIGATING ENGLISH STYLE

A

M O D E R N ENGLISH W O R D -F O R M A T IO N

Valerie Adams CO H ESIO N IN ENGLISH

9

M. A. K. Halliday and Ruquaiya Hasan AN IN T R O D U C T IO N TO ENGLISH

10

TRA NSFO RM ATIO NA L SYNTAX

R odney Huddleston M EANING A N D FORM

11

Dw ight Bolinger DESIGNS IN PROSE

12

W alter Nash STYLE IN FICTION

13

Geoffrey N. Leech and M ichael H. Short THE RH YTH M S OF ENGLISH POETRY

14

D erek Attridge THE LANGUAGE OF H U M O U R

16

W alter Nash G OO D ENGLISH A N D THE G RAM M ARIAN

17

Sidney Greenbaum RH YTH M IC PHRASING IN ENGLISH VERSE

18

R ichard D. C ureton THE ENGLSH INFINITIVE

Patrick J. Duffley

19

The English infinitive

P A T R IC K J. D U F F L E Y Professor of English in the Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada

O Routledge Taylor Sc Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1992 by Longman Group Limited Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, M ilton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an im p rin t o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an inform a business

Copyright © 1992, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro­ duced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo­ copying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, w ithout permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatm ent may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experi­ ence and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, m eth­ ods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such in ­ formation or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a pro­ fessional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negli­ gence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-0-582-07135-3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library o f Congress C ataloguing-in-Publication data Duffley, Patrick J. The English infinitive / Patrick J. Duffley. p. cm. — (English language series ; v. 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-582-07135-6 1. English language—Infinitive. I. Title. II Series. PE1311.D8 1992 425—dc20 91-42738 CIP Set 7J in Bembo

Contents

Foreword

IN T R O D U C T IO N

vii 1

1

T O VS Z E R O : A M E A N I N G F U L D IS T IN C T IO N ?

11

2

T H E IN F IN IT IV E IN C ID E N T T O FU LL VERBS 2.1 Tw o types o f m eaning expressed by the to infinitive 2.2 T he infinitive after have 2.3 T he infinitive after help 2.4 T he infinitive after verbs of perception 2.5 T he infinitive after fin d 2.6 T he infinitive after know 2.7 T he infinitive after verbs denoting causation 2.8 T he infinitive after thank and hid 2.9 T he infinitive after let and allow 2.10 Conclusion

15

T H E IN F IN IT IV E IN C ID E N T T O A U X IL IA R Y V E R B S 3.1 Auxiliary do

91

3

19 22 23 29 47 48 56 80 83 88

91

vi

CONTENTS

3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4

T he modal auxiliaries Need and Dare Ought

Summary

T H E IN F IN IT IV E N O T IN C ID E N T T O A N O T H E R VERB 4.1 Introduction 4.2 T he to infinitive in exclamations denoting a non-realized event 4.3 T he verb and the category o f person 4.4 T he infinitive o f reaction 4.5 T he to infinitive as subject 4.6 T he to infinitive in exclamations denoting a realized event 4.7 T he bare infinitive in exclamations 4.8 T he bare infinitive after rather than and sooner

93 99 114 114 116 116 117 118 123 126 132 133 134

than

4.9 T he infinitive and the category o f person 4.10 Conclusion 5

T H E IN F IN IT IV E IN T H E E N G L IS H V ER B SY STEM 5.1 T he bare infinitive’s place in the system and the role o f to 5.2 Generalized person 5.3 Prospects

135 139 141 141 146 147

NOTES

150

R E FE R E N C E S

157

Index

166

Foreword

It is a matter o f great regret that one scholar who would have eagerly welcomed this book died shortly before its publication. Dwight Bolinger’s keen interest in the grammar o f the infinitive is well reflected in Professor Duffley’s study which draws upon no fewer than five o f Bolinger’s contributions to the subject, spanning the years from 1942 to 1984. As well it might. Infinitival usage is a peculiarly difficult and sensitive area o f grammar, demanding pre­ cisely the profound insights, the freedom o f commitment to any one o f the narrowly based theoretical models, and above all the willingness to bring formal and functional aspects to bear upon each other that characterised the whole o f Bolinger’s scholarship. These characteristics are o f course shared by the linguists with w hom Patrick Duffley has been most closely associated: notably, Gustave Guillaume and Walter Hirtle. Like them, he refuses to be boxed into the study o f form in isolation from meaning, or o f meaning in disregard o f form. And from them he derives the ap­ proach o f focussing on ‘the operative aspect o f language in an at­ tempt to reconstruct both the potential meaning as it exists before being used and the operation by which it is applied to a particular experience to produce actual meaning’ (my italics). Based securely upon extensive corpus data, Professor Duffley’s w ork seeks to define the type o f conceptualisation expressed by each o f the two infinitive forms (with and without to) and makes a major contribution to this area o f verb complementation. University College London M arch, 1992

RANDOLPH QUIRK

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Introduction

T he present study focusses exclusively on the contrast in m eaning betw een the two versions o f the English infinitival form, the so-called bare and to infinitives. Since at first sight this may seem an insignificant aspect o f English grammar and even o f the infinitive, the reader may be surprised that other forms o f com plem entation are not brought in. This formal-functional type o f approach to language w ith its focus on forms only in as m uch as they are able to perform a given function will not be adopted here, however. O n the contrary, it is held that words and their distribution are both instruments for expressing meaning. Consequently, a meaning-focussed approach to syntax will allow us to account both for differences in semantic im port and ipso facto for differences in distribution, thus ‘delivering us from the meaningless universe o f arbitrary, blind rules and arbi­ trary, blind exceptions to the rules’, to use W ierzbicka’s words (1988: 7). This study represents the first systematic comparison o f the bare and to infinitives in their full range o f uses in English. To date, these tw o forms o f the infinitive have always either been studied along w ith various other forms o f com plem entation, as in R ansom 1986,1 or treated separately, as in M air 1990 (which deals only w ith the to infinitive and exclusively in its use as a complement). Even the most comprehensive grammar o f con­ tem porary English, Q uirk et al. 1985, although it cites uses o f both forms o f the infinitive w ith have, help, dare and need, never contrasts the bare and to infinitives as such.

2

THE ENGLISH IN FINITIVE

This brings out another reason for concentrating on a single grammatical contrast here: it seems only sound m ethod to build up to general conclusions about how com plem entation works in English by careful study and analysis o f attested usage o f each individual structure, exploring the relations betw een them , start­ ing w ith the most obvious and natural contrasts. Studying the to infinitive all by itself neglects the obvious fact that it is made up o f to plus bare infinitive. O n the other hand, lum ping the infini­ tive together w ith such complements as that-c lauses, whetherclauses, for + noun + to structures, whether to structures, -ing forms, and verbless clauses containing only an adjective or a noun leads to problems w hich are just as, if not m ore, serious. Studies w hich do this tend, firstly, to begin by postulating ab­ stract, universal semantic categories and then to look for the various forms w hich can be used to express them . Thus R ansom begins her book on com plem entation’s meanings and forms by stating: There are tw o questions w hich this book addresses. Can one find a small, finite set o f meanings w hich systematically under­ lies the enorm ous variety o f meanings found in complements? And can one make predictions from this set o f meanings about the variety o f forms they take? T he answer to both questions is yes. (1986: 1) She then proceeds to postulate tw o sets o f ‘modality meanings’: a set o f four ‘Inform ation M odalities’ (Truth, Future Truth, O c­ currence, Action), w hich ‘describe inform ation about som eone’s knowledge or behaviour in the w orld’, and a second set o f four ‘Evaluation Modalities’ (Predetermined, D eterm ined, U ndeter­ mined, Indeterminate), w hich ‘describe evaluations o f alterna­ tives’ (p. 15). After claiming that these tw o sets combine to form sixteen different types o f modality m eaning (Predeter-m ined Truth, D eterm ined Truth, etc.), R ansom attempts to show how these ‘meanings’ are related to certain types o f higher predicates and their complements. W hat is implausible about this analysis, however, and shows that the tools do not fit the object to w hich they are applied is that the infinitive is used in twelve out o f the sixteen ‘modality meanings’. This is a pretty clear indication that the latter have little or nothing to do w ith the basic m eaning o f

IN TR O D U C TIO N

3

this verb form. R ansom ’s analysis o f specific higher predicates confirms this conclusion. T he verb regret, for instance, is said to always take a com plem ent w ith a Predeterm ined T ruth M odality (p. 16). But since this predicate can be followed by either a to infinitive, a that-choise or an -ing form, one wonders w hat con­ nection the m eaning ‘Predeterm ined T ru th ’ has w ith each of these three com plem ent forms. By postulating a plurality of ‘meanings’ independently o f form and then seeing what forms can express these meanings, this sort o f approach violates one o f our most basic intuitions about language, namely that there is some kind o f unity to the m eaning o f a form. Even in studies w hich do not start by postulating abstract meanings, however, taking the function ‘com plem ent’ as the basis o f analysis can lead to comparisons betw een structures w hich are too distantly related for the conclusions drawn to be significant. This occurs for instance in R iddle’s study o f the con­ trast betw een to infinitives and that-c lauses as complements, the conclusion being that in infinitival complements ‘there is a greater participation on the part o f the subject or speaker in terms o f control, subjective opinion, and attitude, as well as a sense o f decreased authority and distance’ (1975: 473). W hile such observations do have the m erit o f being based on usage, they are too general to be o f m uch use and therefore raise the question o f w hat they reveal about the m eaning o f the forms studied. T he same thing m ight be said o f B orkin’s (1973) study o f to be deletion, w hich concludes that ‘the syntactic processes of both raising and to be deletion parallel the same kind o f semantic disintegration o f w hole propositions and potential states o f affairs relevant to empirical reality into elements whose status is m ore d ep e n d en t on h u m an p e rc e p tio n , c o n v en tio n s, and desires’ (p. 55). A nother reason for lim iting ourselves to the contrast betw een the bare and to infinitives is the choice o f a corpus-based ap­ proach. T he present study is based on a careful examination o f the 24,000 occurrences o f the tw o versions o f the infinitive in the B row n University Corpus o f American English (abbreviated B U C ), w ith reference for some points to the Lancaster/OsloBergen Corpus (LOB), and to examples collected personally from grammars and reading. Using a corpus removes the linguist from the methodologically unacceptable situation o f being in a

4

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

conflict o f interests, m aking up the very data w hich he is trying to explain. It also avoids the danger o f jum ping to conclusions on the basis o f insufficient observation, w hich seems to be what has occurred in the following claim made by Leech (1987: 115): . . . o f the following four sentences, the fourth is unaccept­ able: I like to see you ; Fd like to see you ; I like seeing you; *Fd like seeing you. Evidently this is because the strong elem ent o f doubt in the hypothetical construction Fd like conflicts w ith the truth-com m itm ent o f the verb in the verb - ing construc­ tion seeing you. M ore thorough observation o f the data w ould have shown not only that it is possible to use the -ing after would like , as in I think Fd like interviewing a man o f such renown (pointed out by Bladon 1968: 209), but furtherm ore that it cannot be m aintained that the -ing implies truth com m itm ent in the face o f uses such as Quite a few confessed that they had seriously considered ending their lives (B. Conrad 1982: 179).

O nly one attem pt (M ittw och 1990) has been made to deal w ith the bare vs to infinitive contrast by itself, by means how ­ ever o f an autonom ous-syntax and not a meaning-based ap­ proach. Unfortunately, this study focusses only on the use o f the infinitive after perception verbs and causatives, bringing in the modals as exceptions in an appendix, and saying nothing of usage w ith auxiliary do, dare, need, find, know, non-causative have, or exclamations. In addition, the attempt to justify syntax independendy o f semantics, to build a purely formal grammar, cre­ ates a gap betw een syntax and semantics w hich even a study such as that o f M ittw och, w hich purports to address the question o f ‘to w hat extent the distribution o f bare infinitive comple­ ments is . . . semantically m otivated’ (p. 103), is unable to bridge. M ittw och links the use o f the bare infinitive to tw o logi­ cal, truth-value-type categories — lack o f potential for inde­ pendent tem poral specification (the infinitive’s event cannot be situated at another point in tim e than that o f the higher predi­ cate) and veridicality (or entailm ent o f the existence o f the state o f affairs that the bare infinitive denotes from the truth o f the ^indicates the sentence is unacceptable

IN TR O D U C TIO N

5

sentence as a whole). W hile both o f these criteria seem to have something to do w ith the bare infinitive’s use after perception verbs and causatives, they have no bearing at all on its most frequent use - that after the modal auxiliaries. H ere the infini­ tive’s event not only can be specified independently o f that ex­ pressed by the higher predicate, but can also be non-entailed: (1)

W e can now leave tom orrow as planned.

M ittw och’s explanation o f the use o f the bare infinitive after perception verbs and causatives, on the other hand, is based on a premise — the bare infinitive’s resistance to negation — w hich is arrived at by purely syntactic argumentation. T he starting-point for this argum entation is the widely accepted view that the to preceding the infinitive ‘functions syntactically like an auxiliary verb’ (p. 122), because o f its behaviour w ith respect to VP ellip­ sis, adverb position, and sentence polarity (i.e. to serves as a prop for the attachm ent o f negation and to receive contrastive stress signalling positive polarity). Given this latter auxiliary-like char­ acteristic o f to, M ittw och argues (p. 123) that if to is an auxiliary and an auxiliary is required to carry negation, then higher predi­ cates whose complements do not seem logical w hen negated should not require to in the complement. M ere observation o f actual language data is enough to dis­ count the proposed explanation however. T he bare infinitive can be, and often is, negated, as, for example, in its use after the modal auxiliaries: (2)

I simply cannot not come to his defence,

or in exclamations/questions o f the type: (3)

W hat? M e not do my hom ework?

As for the claim that negation makes no sense w ith the bare infinitive after perception verbs and causatives, this is a case o f logical categories being applied to language in an a priori m an­ ner: even though it is logically impossible to perceive or to make nothing happen, in the way language is actually used, not doing something can sometimes be interpreted by the speaker as

6

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

doing something. M ittw och herself gives attested examples o f this (p. 129) but brushes them aside as ‘ungrammatical’ because her theoretical presuppositions predict that they should not occur: (4)

Instinct made them not waste the peeling o f the apple. (D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow)

(5)

...

if they can make the professors not lose face.

In a scientific approach, on the other hand, observed data deter­ mines w hether a hypothesis stands or falls. T he autonom ous-syntax approach to the infinitive just de­ scribed shows very clearly that in such a theory there is an un­ bridgeable gap betw een syntax and semantics. As M ittw och herself admits just before offering a purely syntactic explanation for the absence o f to after the modal auxiliaries, semantics ‘goes a long way but not all the way in explaining syntactic distribution’ (p. 127), even though she does feel that ‘if w e do not find a niche for the semantic correlates o f the syntax somewhere in the grammar, we are in danger o f impoverishing our overall account o f how language w orks’. A utonom ous syntax places her how ever in the dilemma o f m aking a syntax defined in purely formal terms fit a truth-value semantics defined in terms o f logical cat­ egories. In order to avoid this impasse, and also because it seems quite plausible that this is the way language actually works, the ap­ proach taken here will be based on the premise that syntax is not autonom ous but conditioned by, am ong other things,2 the lexical and grammatical meanings o f the words that go together to make up the sentence. This view o f syntax and form as hav­ ing the function o f com m unicating m eaning relates our approach therefore to those o f W ierzbicka, Langacker and Mair, although there remain very im portant differences in the way o f dealing w ith this aspect o f language. As regards the comm unicative-functional analysis applied to the infinitive by M air 1990, I share his view (pp. 10-11, echoing Givon 1984: 7) that ‘the rigidly formalised “autonom ous” gram­ m ar o f com petence w hich has dom inated research into m odem English sentential com plem entation for the past twenty-five years

IN TR O D U C TIO N

7

. . . is “essentially a deterministic autom aton, making structural ‘grammaticality’ choices, rather than an instrum ent for carrying on com m unication” \ I also believe as M air does in the im port­ ance o f real, attested data and o f taking into account the context o f utterance, w hence m y recourse to an extensive corpus. The fundamental difference betw een M air’s com m unicative-func­ tional analysis and that presented in this study how ever is that in the view presented here the comm unicative function o f language is necessarily based on its conceptualizing or representational function: w e will w ork on the premise that if there were no perm anent mental content linked to words and grammatical structures, they w ould not be able to serve to comm unicate any­ thing. In other words, to comm unicate we must express some­ thing, but we can express only what w e have already conceptualized. T he functional approach, on the other hand, puts form into direct relation w ith communicative function (cf. M air 1990: 5, 10, 222), so that while one can only applaud M air’s suggestion that ‘syntax itself may be determ ined by com ­ m unicative requirem ents’ (p. 249), it must be pointed out that he forgets, am ong the communicative requirements w hich lan­ guage must necessarily satisfy, the first and most im portant - the m eaning-content o f the forms themselves, an aspect w hich is not treated at all in his study. This provides further justification for the focus o f the present work: the m eaning o f the infinitive. Placing the focus on m eaning is also characteristic o f W ierzbicka’s ‘grammatical semantics’ approach: ‘language’, she feels, ‘is an integrated system, where everything “conspires” to convey m eaning — words, grammatical constructions, and illocutionary devices (including intonation)’ (1988: 1). O u r view o f the se­ mantic side o f language and how it is best analysed does not quite coincide w ith that o f W ierzbicka however. It is her aim to decompose the meanings o f all utterances in all languages into a set o f fifteen or tw enty ‘semantic primitives’ such as the notions o f ‘I ’, ‘yo u ’, ‘this’, ‘som eone’, ‘som ething’, ‘tim e’, ‘place’, ‘w ant’, ‘don’t w ant’, ‘say’, ‘think’, etc. (1988: 10). This is m otivated by the belief that ‘the deeper one goes in decomposition, the m ore one is able to liberate oneself from language-specific aspects of m eaning and to reach a level w here the lexicons o f various lan­ guages are maximally isom orphic’ (1987: 30). In the present study, on the other hand, there will be no attempt to univer-

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THE ENGLISH IN FINITIVE

salize in this way, simply because in order to get beyond ‘lan­ guage-specific aspects o f m eaning’ we must first analyse each o f these aspects (in each language) on its own. Again, w e are driven to concentrate on a single form and its uses as a necessary pre­ requisite for any valid generalizations. Like W ierzbicka and Mair, Langacker also believes that gram­ m ar does not constitute an autonom ous formal level but must rather be treated as com m unicating meaning. M oreover, he comes one step closer to the true nature o f language, in my opinion, w hen he views grammar as ‘symbolic’, claiming that a given grammatical construction ‘imposes and symbolizes a par­ ticular structuring o f conceptual content’, so that w hen tw o sen­ tences such as (6a) and (6b) are compared, ‘the semantic contribution o f a grammatical m orphem e like to cannot be ig­ nored, even if it represents a figurative extension o f the spatial to into m ore abstract domains’ (1987: 40): (6a)

H e sent a letter to Susan.

(6b)

H e sent Susan a letter.

Like Langacker’s analysis, the approach followed here will be concerned w ith how grammatical m eaning structures conceptual content so as to allow it to be expressed. A slight difference betw een the tw o approaches is that here grammatical m eaning is seen as having a slightly higher degree o f abstraction, so that whereas Langacker speaks o f ‘conventional imagery’ here the term ‘mental representation’ is used. T he analysis presented here will, in addition, take into account an im portant aspect of m eaning w hich Langacker’s does not: the factthat it exists in two different states in the mind. M eaning exists first o f all as a potential available for use by the speaker w henever he needs it: this is the state in w hich it is stored in the m ind outside o f any particular application. T he second state in w hich m eaning exists is as an actuality w hich has been (is being) used to refer to a particular experience that the speaker is trying to express: here the indeterm inate potentiality o f the initial state has been honed dow n to one particular realization. M eaning in its initial state will be called here potential meaning, and in its realized state it will be designated as actual meaning. Since the act o f language is

IN TR O D U C TIO N

9

essentially the mental operation o f applying potential meanings to particular experiences w hich one is trying to express, this leads the approach followed here to focus on the operative as­ pect o f language in an attem pt to reconstruct both the potential m eaning as it exists before being used and the operation by w hich it is applied to a particular experience to produce actual m eaning (see Guillaume 1984: 4ff and Hirtle 1982: 15ff for fur­ ther details). This is w hy potential meanings are seen here as operative programs designed to perm it operations o f thought, albeit unconscious ones, w hich produce mental representations o f particular experiences. To sum up the situating o f the approach applied to the infini­ tive in this study w ith respect to other theoretical frameworks, it will be useful to reflect a m om ent on the argum entation presented by Palmer (1988: 8) in favour o f formal grammar: . . . there have been disagreements about the relation o f form and m eaning to grammar. Some older grammarians as­ sumed that grammar was essentially concerned w ith m eaning and defined their grammatical categories in semantic terms, nouns in terms o f ‘things’, gender in terms o f sex, singular and plural in terms o f counting. M ost m odern linguists have firmly maintained that grammar must be formal, that gram­ matical categories must be based on form and not on meaning. It is easy enough to show that categories based on form and categories based on m eaning are sometimes incompatible. There is an often-quoted pair o f words in English, oats and wheat, o f w hich the first is formally plural and the second formally singular. But there is nothing in the nature o f oats and w heat that requires that they should be treated (in terms o f meaning) as ‘m ore than o ne’ and ‘o n e’ respectively. Palmer touches here the fundamental issue o f the science o f lin­ guistics, one’s attitude towards w hich will determ ine the success or failure o f this theoretical enterprise: the relation betw een m eaning and form. H e shows very convincingly that it is futile to base grammar solely on meaning defined in terms o f the ex­ ternal reality referred to by the speaker. W e have shown, on the other hand, the impasse to which treating grammar in purely

10

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

formal terms leads in the case o f the infinitive. W hat remains is an approach in w hich grammar is based, not just on meaning, nor just on form, but on both form and m eaning at the same time. In using the w ord ‘m eaning’ a rectification must be made however: m eaning must not be equated w ith the external reality referred to by a form, and so this term will be used here to refer exclusively to the way the speaker conceptualizes his experience, w hich very often is not in direct, univocal correlation w ith the latter at all. Thus it is that w e are capable o f conceiving the genus ‘animal’ even though all we experience in the outside w orld are particular dogs and cats. Thus it is, in addition, that in English we categorize oats mentally as discontinuate and can speak o f an oat (cf. O E D ), whereas w heat is categorized as continuate, so that w e cannot speak o f a wheat, unless we m ean a particular species (for the experiential basis o f this categorization, see W ierzbicka 1988: 527—35). T he approach taken here will try therefore to respect w hat is felt to be the basic condition for hum an language to exist and to serve as an instrum ent for com ­ munication: the existence o f a stable relation betw een a sign and its meaning. This is w hy the present study will concentrate on only tw o signs - to and the bare infinitive —and will attempt, by comparing w hat the bare infinitive expresses alone w ith w hat it expresses w hen preceded by to in all the cases where the tw o uses can be compared, to define the type o f conceptualization expressed by these tw o signs.

One To vs zero: a meaningful distinction?

T he existence o f tw o versions o f the infinitive poses the problem o f their status in the linguistic system o f English. Are they dis­ tinct forms o f the verb or simply variants o f a single verb form — the infinitive? W hat is the role o f the to w hich distinguishes them on the level o f the sign? Various answers have been suggested to these questions. Joos (1964: 52) exemplifies an approach which proposes two separate verb forms — the ‘infinitive’, which is always preceded by to, and the ‘presentative’, which is not. Such an analysis is highly implaus­ ible however because it fails to recognize that the to infinitive poses a problem o f syntax which goes beyond the level o f the individual word. Joos’s ‘infinitive’ is in fact made up o f two words - to plus the bare infinitive —as can be seen from the possibility o f inserting an adverb between them (I want to really scare him) and o f finding to all by itself, something which is strictly impossible with inflec­ tions (I don't want to). Moreover, his proposal cannot account for the close relationship between pairs o f sentences such as: (la)

Thus by reducing the tem perature o f m atter in the ga­ seous state it can be made to pass through all three physical states. (Isaacs 1963: 46; in van Ek 1966: 121)

(lb)

Thus by reducing the tem perature o f m atter in the ga­ seous state one can make it pass through all three physi­ cal states.

12

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

T he alternative to Joos’s view is that the tw o editions o f the infinitive are variants. T he crucial question arises here, however, as to w hether this variation is meaningful or not. M ost analysts simply assume that it is not, calling to an ‘infinitive m arker’ and confining themselves to an enum eration o f the types o f context in w hich each form o f the infinitive is found (cf. Zandvoort 1957: 4). It is sometimes suggested in addition that the bare infinitive is a sort o f grammatical fossil w hich is only found in petrified form in certain fixed constructions (Curm e 1931: 456). Schibsbye (1965: 24) suggests on the other hand that ‘the infini­ tive w ith and w ithout to corresponds in the main to the two sides o f the infinitive, the nominal and the verbal’: the infinitive w ith to is found in positions similar to those in w hich one finds substantives, adjectives and adverbs, while the infinitive w ithout to ‘is generally closely connected w ith an auxiliary verb, and forms a single unit w ith it as regards stress and intonation’. Besides the fact that it is not always true —the bare infinitive has many uses w here it is not in relation w ith an auxiliary — this distinction between the two infinitives is also purely distributional: Schibsbye simply lists the various contexts where each infinitive is found without developing any difference o f meaning. O ther linguists imply even m ore clearly that there is no dif­ ference in m eaning betw een the tw o versions o f the infinitive by claiming that to is meaningless w hen it precedes the bare infini­ tive form. Jespersen, for instance, is o f the opinion that although 6to had at first its ordinary prepositional meaning o f direction . . . the m eaning o f the preposition has been w eakened and in some cases totally extinguished’ (1927: 10). In fact to ‘has now come to be a m ere empty grammatical appendix to the infinitive’ (1940: 154). Chom sky (1957: 100) goes even further, for he holds that to is a m orphem e that ‘can hardly be said to have a m eaning in any independent sense’.3 This position is echoed by Lehrer (1987: 256), w ho states that 6to has no m eaning o f its o w n ’, by Buyssens (1987: 341), w ho asserts that it is a ‘wellknow n fact that w hen the infinitive is used as the subject, the predicate, or the direct object o f the sentence, it is normally preceded by a meaningless to9, and by Andersson (1985: 57), w ho distinguishes betw een the preposition to, w hich has a meaning, and the pure to infinitive marker, ‘w hich only has the syntactic function to introduce [ric] an infinitive’.

T O VS ZERO : A M E A N IN G F U L D I S T I N C T I O N ?

13

Treating to as meaningless in some or all o f its uses with the infinitive raises several serious problems however. N ot the least of these is that this does not square very well with the way to is learned by children. Bloom et al.’s study o f how to is acquired in infinitival complement constructions led them to the clear conclu­ sion that ‘the children learned to with the meaning “direction to­ wards” and not as a meaningless syntactic marker’ (1984: 391). A second problem is that it seems somehow contradictory that to should have meaning in some o f its uses but not in others. A glaring example o f this is Andersson’s claim that to has meaning in H e trained the dog to perform some very clever tricks, where it is preposi­ tional, but not in H e taught the dog to perform some very clever tricks, where it is ‘a pure infinitive marker without meaning’ (1985: 267). Jespersen (1940: 157) sets the problem in more general terms: To is used w ith an infinitive in the first place where the usual m eaning o f the preposition is distinctly felt: he went to fetch his hat / he was led (inclined) to believe — or is m ore or less vaguely present: ready to believe/anxious to believe. See especially the in­ finitive o f purpose and result. But then it is used extensively w here a preposition seems to be naturally required, but w here to is really inadequate, as in the infinitive o f reaction: glad to meet you (cf Fr. charme de vous voir). And finally where there seems to be no intrinsic need for a preposition: to see her is to love her.

If w hat Jespersen suggests were true, however, one m ight expect to to show some tendency to be dropped in the uses w here it is ‘meaningless’ and there is no sign o f this occurring in any o f the functions listed either by Buyssens or by Jespersen. And if to is completely meaningless w hen used w ith the infinitive, w hy isn’t it tending to disappear completely? O r w hy isn’t its occurrence completely haphazard? Such questions cast serious doubts on the likelihood o f to having no m eaning in these uses. Conclusive evidence that the bare and to infinitives cannot be treated as meaningless variants is provided how ever by Jespersen’s observation that there are some cases w here both forms can occur in the same context. T he examples given are: (2)

I have seen hastier people than you stay all night.

14

(3)

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

Seeing flight to be impossible, he surrendered.

(Jespersen 1940: 280) These give rise to minimal pairs such as: (4a)

I saw him be impolite.

(4b)

I saw him to be impolite.

In itself, the occurrence o f both infinitive forms in the same context is in flagrant contradiction w ith the idea o f meaningless contextual variation. But m ore important, once the semantics o f the tw o constructions is examined, the hypothesis o f meaningless variants m ust be ruled out once and for all: the tw o construc­ tions do not m ean the same thing. According to Jespersen (1940: 158, 180), see w ith the bare infinitive denotes ‘immediate per­ ception’, whereas w ith the to infinitive the m eaning conveyed is that o f ‘inference’ or ‘logical conclusion’. T he use o f the infinitive after see isnot an isolated case m ore­ over.T he minimal pair in (5a) and (5b)provides further evi­ dence o f the m eaning distinction: (5a)

I had nine people call.

(5b)

I had nine people to call.

In addition, it has been pointed out (Erades 1950: 123) that it is not exactly the same thing to ask someone W ill you help me get these letters addressed? as it is to ask W ill you help me to get these letters addressed?

O ne can only conclude that the bare and to infinitives are anything but meaningless contextual variants. They can be used to make distinctions o f m eaning w hich are sometimes very subtle but certainly very real. This implies that the to preceding the infinitive has meaning. T he next question is obviously: W hat kind o f meaning? In order to show w hat kind o f meaning the to and bare infinitive have, we shall begin by uses w here the infini­ tive is found w ith a full verb. T he m ethod used will be mainly that o f attempting to contrast the tw o versions in the same con­ text.

Two

The infinitive incident to full verbs

T hat the to preceding the infinitive should bring a m eaning o f its ow n into the context is no surprise for a semantically oriented approach to language, since from this point o f view the very raison d'etre o f a linguistic sign is to express meaning. T he ana­ lysis proposed here will therefore be in sharp contrast to theories o f language w hich admit empty grammatical entities such as ‘dum m y do9 w ithout a prior scrutiny o f m eaning.4 O f course, any language may have semiological vestiges from the past w hich coexist alongside productive forms. O ne such example is the dis­ tinction betw een the strong and weak forms o f the past tense in English: there is absolutely no difference in the grammatical m eaning o f ‘past’ betw een tw o forms such as spoke and talked. Even where there are tw o signs in use for the same verb, as w ith he bade and he bidded, one immediately recognizes a unity o f m eaning (‘past’).5 That the to and bare infinitives, on the other hand, can express differences o f meaning, as witnessed by the contexts m entioned at the end o f the previous chapter, shows that they are not mere meaningless fossils. T he approach to m eaning taken in this study, as m entioned in the Introduction, distinguishes betw een tw o states in w hich m eaning exists in the hum an mind. T he first state, called ‘poten­ tial m eaning’, corresponds to the perm anent meaning-capacity w hich a w ord or m orphem e possesses before it is utilized in any particular situation. Potential m eaning is m eaning as it resides in the speaker’s unconscious even w hen he is not speaking. T he second state, called ‘actual m eaning’, is the signification w hich a

16

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

w ord or m orphem e evokes w hen applied to a particular experi­ ence in a unique, actual act o f speech. Actual m eaning is thus that part o f the potential m eaning w hich is brought to con­ sciousness by a particular experience to be expressed. In the view o f language taken here, therefore, potential m eaning is seen as an instrum ent for representing or conceptualizing particular experi­ ences in such a way as to make them sayable. T he problem o f defining the potential m eaning o f the to in­ finitive has already been posed, in a summary way, in the com ­ m ent from Jespersen (1940: 157) cited in Chapter 1. Q uirk et al. (1985: 687) suggest something quite similar to Jespersen — ‘the infinitive m arker to may be viewed as related to the spatial preposition to through metaphorical connection’ - and illustrate this by the series: John w ent to the pool, to the pool for a swim, for a swim in the pool, for a swim, to swim.

—D irection —D irection + Purpose —Purpose + Location —Purpose — ‘M etaphorical connection’ o f infinitive marker

H o w far this metaphorical connection extends is not specified, but it is significant that both Q uirk et al. and Jespersen feel that w here to is clearly felt to have m eaning it can be connected w ith the preposition to in the spatial sense o f m ovem ent towards a point. T he existence o f other cases where this connection appar­ ently cannot be made, as pointed out by Jespersen, indicates how ever that this sense cannot be taken as descriptive o f the full potential for m eaning w hich to has in contem porary English. T he postulate put forward in this study is that the potential m eaning o f to before the infinitive is m ore abstract than that found in the spatial use o f the preposition, and can be stated as follows: the possibility o f a m ovem ent from a point in time con­ ceived as a before-position to another point in time w hich marks the end-point o f the m ovem ent and w hich represents an after­ position w ith respect to the first. This greater abstraction in m eaning is due to a shift from the essentially spatial sense o f the preposition to a strictly tem poral sense w ith the infinitive. T he

THE IN FINITIVE IN C ID E N T TO FULL VERBS

17

potential m eaning o f to w ith the infinitive can therefore be diag­ ram m ed in the following manner: to BEFORE­ POSITION

AFTER­ POSITION

T he potential m eaning o f to as described above fits in w ith that o f the bare infinitive in the following very simple way: the latter evokes that w hich defines the end-point o f the m ovem ent denoted by to. M ore precisely, the infinitive evokes an event, and to, the m ovem ent from an instant situated before this event up to the instant at w hich the event begins. This view is similar to H irtle’s description (1975: 20) o f the to infinitive as referring an event ‘to any point in time prior to its realization’, since to can be seen to evoke that w hich comes before the realization o f the event. However, in contrast to that o f Hirtle, the analysis put forward here proposes that w ithout to the idea o f a prior position in time is not evoked, since otherwise the particle w ould be completely redundant and hence meaningless, w hich has been shown not to be the case. T hat to situates the bare infinitive’s event as an after-position w ith respect to something else explains w hy so many gramma­ rians associate the to infinitive in some or all o f its uses w ith notions such as ‘future’ (Wierzbicka 1988: 188), ‘mere poten­ tiality for action’ (Q uirk et al. 1985: 1191), ‘unrealized’ (Dixon 1984: 592) or ‘hypothesis’ (Bolinger 1978: 10; 1968: 124). Even Mair, w ho proposes no basic m eaning for the to infinitive, is led by his careful examination o f the data to observe that w ith prac­ tically no exceptions all the matrix verbs followed by to + infini­ tive in the direct object, ditransitive, m onotransitive raising, complex transitive, and SVOA constructions can be charac­ terized as ‘forw ard-looking predicates’ (1990: 102, 104-5). The view o f to taken here also accounts for the impression o f what R iddle (1975: 467) calls ‘control’ w hich one often feels w ith the to infinitive, i.e. the implication that the matrix event is respon­ sible for or affects the com plem ent event (cf. the difference be­ tw een Jane forgot to be cautious and Jane forgot that she was cautious). If the matrix event is felt to ‘control’ the infinitive event’s realiz­

18

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

ation, then the matrix event must obviously be conceived as a conditioning factor w ith respect to the latter, and therefore as logically prior to (i.e. before) the infinitive event. W hile these descriptions o f the semantic value o f to + infinitive are too spe­ cific to be adequate characterizations o f the potential meanings involved here (in fact they correspond to actual meanings o f the construction in particular contexts), they are nevertheless faithful reflections o f the potential m eaning o f to and o f the fact that the latter always evokes the bare infinitive’s event as an after-position w ith respect to some position before its realization.7 T he so-called ‘bare infinitive’ will be analysed here as evoking a perfective view o f the realization o f an event, i.e. the image o f an event as unfolding in time from its beginning to its end in the case o f an action-like event or as actualizing its full lexical content at each instant o f its existence in the case o f a state-like one. (For further details on the action-like/state-like distinction and its relation to the simple form o f the verb, see Hirtle 1988.) That this is so can be seen by contrasting sentences such as those evoked in Chapter 1 and repeated here: (la)

I had nine people to call

(lb)

I had nine people call

Preceded by to the infinitive is felt to evoke an action referred to a point in time prior to its realization: (la) above situates call as being supposed to follow the existence o f the obligation to real­ ize this event, denoted by had. N o t preceded by to, as in (lb), the infinitive evokes the actual realization o f the action o f calling from beginning to end in the past tim e-stretch referred to by had.

T he m eaning o f the to infinitive is thus in fact a com bination o f tw o potentials: the potential m eaning o f the bare infinitive, w hich gives the speaker the possibility o f representing the realiz­ ation o f any action as unfolding from its beginning through to its end and any state as having a fully actualized lexical content; and the potential significate o f to, w hich affords the speaker the possibility o f representing any m ovem ent in tim e from a before­ position to an after-position (corresponding here to the begin­ ning o f the infinitive event). T he rem ainder o f this chapter will

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

19

be devoted to examining how the potential provided by the tw o versions o f the infinitive is actually used by speakers o f English in contexts w here the infinitive occurs after full verbs. As a means o f analysing the m eaning o f to, special attention has been given to contexts in w hich the two infinitives can be contrasted, since in such cases to is the only variable in a constant linguistic context.

2.1 T W O T Y P E S O F M E A N I N G E X P R E S S E D BY T H E T O IN F IN IT IV E O n the basis o f the meanings expressed, all the uses o f the to infinitive can be divided into tw o general types w hich at first sight m ight seem to be in direct contradiction w ith one another. In some o f its uses, the to infinitive evokes an event as non-realized or yet to be realized. This recalls the sort o f impression referred to by W ierzbicka, Q uirk et al., D ixon, and Bolinger quoted above: (2)

H e tried to get free.

(3)

H e wanted to get free.

In others how ever it evokes the opposite impression o f the event actually being realized, as in: (4)

H e managed to get free.

(5)

I forced him to tell the truth.

(This, in passing, shows that one cannot reduce the potential m eaning o f to to the notions ‘future’, ‘potential’, ‘unrealized’ or ‘hypothetical’.) All o f the uses o f the to infinitive w ith full verbs in the corpus fall into one or the other o f these tw o categories. T he infinitive event is expressed as non-realized w ith verbs ex­ pressing desire {He wants, wishes, desires to leave), endeavour {He tried, attempted, endeavoured to explain it to me), verbal comm and {He asked, told, ordered, commanded them to open the door), require­ m ent {The law requires you to purchase a licence. The car needs to be

20

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

fixed), etc. O n the other hand, the infinitive event is understood to be realized after verbs o f achievement (I managed, got to ask the Prime Minister a question), causation (I persuaded, convinced him to give up smoking), etc. Granted the potential m eaning o f to postulated above, these

two general categories provide a clear illustration o f Guillaum e’s principle (1984: 134-5) that actualizing a potential m eaning is an operation o f thought w hich takes place while the speaker is mentally constructing a sentence and w hich he intercepts w hen he has found the representation w hich he feels as adequate for w hat he wants to express. T he first type o f usage, that w here the infinitive is non-realized (He tried to get free), w ould appear to arise w hen the m ovem ent denoted by to is not carried to its end-point, i.e. w hen only the beginning o f the m ovem ent signi­ fied by to is actualized: to BEFORE

AFTER

(tried)

(get free)

T he second type, w here the sense is rather that the infinitive’s event is actually realized (He managed to get free), seems to arise w here the speaker has actualized the w hole o f the m ovem ent signified by to, thus reaching the point where the realization of the infinitive event takes place. In a diagram: to AFTER

BEFORE

(managed)

(get free)

Verbs such as try evoke a m ovem ent towards the beginning o f the infinitive event but do not reach it, whereas verbs like man­ age take one all the way up to the point o f actual realization. T he existence o f tw o different ways o f actualizing the poten­ tial m eaning o f to in discourse is clearly seen in sentences w hich can be ambiguous:

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

(6)

21

I got up and opened my m outh to commence a dow n­ right torrent o f abuse. (E. Bronte 1847: 236)

H ere to commence could m ean either ‘in order to com m ence’ (implying that the person changed his m ind before actually saying anything) or ‘and com m enced’ (implying realization). In the quotation above only the first sense is intended by the author - the full potential o f a w ord is never actualized entirely in any one of its uses.8 Nevertheless, such examples provide striking confirmation that there are tw o possible interceptions, early and late, o f the m ovem ent denoted by to, two possible ways of thinking to in its uses w ith the infinitive. T he explanations given above provide the general framework o f analysis to w hich the various actual uses o f to before the in­ finitive will be referred in this study. A ccounting for the use of this form in any context will always imply relating the particular m eaning actualized in the context to the perm anent potential significate postulated for it in tongue^, and will consequently in­ volve: (1) showing that the com m on denom inator o f a be­ fore/after sequence is present (the constant elem ent evoked by to), and (2) showing how the speaker has fit the particular ex­ perience he is talking about into this potential by intercepting the operation o f actualizing it at the appropriate m om ent (the variable elem ent expressed by to). As for the bare infinitive, its use will be explained in terms o f the absence o f a before/after sequence betw een the event denoted by the full verb and that denoted by the infinitive. T he contrast betw een the to and bare infinitives can therefore be stated as one o f subsequence (before/after relationship) vs non­ subsequence (the bare infinitive’s event is not conceived as an after-position w ith respect to something else). T he rest o f this chapter will constitute an attempt to explain by means o f this hypothesis the various uses o f these tw o forms w here they both occur w ith the same or similar full verbs.

^ Tongue refers here to language as it exists in the m ind o f the speaker before he uses it to produce discourse (cf. the Saussurean distinction betw een langue and discours).

22

2 .2

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

TH E IN FIN ITIV E A FTER H A V E

Breitenstein (1980: 193) gives three different senses for have in its use w ith the bare infinitive: (a) I’ll have him clear up this mess (an instruction) (b) I w o n ’t have you say that (a strong wish) (c) I never had such a thing happen to m e (an experience) W e will save sense (a) for the section on causatives, as it is re­ lated to that o f make. Senses (b) and (c) how ever can both be treated in terms o f the notion o f ‘passively experiencing’ some event, w ith (b) implying on top o f that a refusal to stand by passively and let someone do something w ithout intervening. If we analyse the relation betw een the event o f ‘passively experien­ cing’ denoted by have and that o f saying or happening denoted by the infinitive, it becomes obvious immediately that the tw o must be conceived as occurring in the same stretch o f time: one can only experience something while it is happening. T he use o f the bare infinitive after have in its ‘passive experience’ sense can therefore be explained by the absence o f a before/after relation betw een the passive experiencing (denoted by have) and the event w hich is experienced (expressed by the infinitive). As for the to infinitive, we have already alluded to the im ­ pressions associated w ith its use after have + direct object w ith regard to (la)—(lb) above. In I had nine people to call, had evokes the state o f having the people on o ne’s list and is thus expressive o f a concrete obligation to call them . T he relation betw een an obligation concretized in the form o f presence on a list and the realization o f the action called for by this presence is obviously one o f subsequence, w hence the use o f the to infinitive. Have + direct object + to can also evoke the idea o f ‘having present for the purpose o f : (7a)

H e had four examiners to ask him all sorts o f questions.

(7b)

H e had four examiners ask him all sorts o f questions.

T he same type o f relation holds how ever betw een the having present and the realization o f the purpose for w hich the examin-

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

23

ers were present in (7a) as betw een the existence o f obligation and the realization o f the object o f obligation in (la). Indeed just as (la) does not say that any calls were made, (7a) does not necessarily imply that any questions were actually asked by the examiners at all (while (7b) does). This use, then, also follows from the potential m eaning o f to postulated above. Since the to infinitive, as just seen, expresses a non-realized event in these uses, it will be analysed as involving an initial interception o f to, as w ith try diagrammed above. T he actual m eaning o f the bare infinitive, on the other hand, can be char­ acterized as a form o f non-subsequence involving complete coincidence in tim e betw een tw o events - the experiencing and the event experienced. It should perhaps be pointed out before going on to the next set o f examples to be discussed that most o f the uses found w ith have admit o f only one o f the tw o interpretations given above. Thus (8) and (9) can be construed as ‘passive experience’, while (10) admits only o f an obligational-type interpretation: (8)

I had a horse run away w ith me. (Robinson 1860: 119; in Visser 1973: 2269)

(9)

I had tw o dogs die o f snake bite. (Galsworthy 1926: 4; in Visser 1973: 2269)

(10)

I had myself to look to first o f all. (Stevenson 1886: 36; in Jesperson 1940:227)

2 .3

TH E IN FIN ITIV E A FTER H E L P

W ith the harder to keep and im port to (11)

verb help, the contrast betw een the tw o infinitives is observe, as can be seen from (11) and (12), w here to to explain could be substituted w ithout altering their any significant degree:

Several photographs and charts o f the galaxy help the non-scientist keep up w ith the discussion . . . (BU C C13 0730 6)

24

(12)

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

T he histories o f cease and quit are less varied but the senses found for them in earlier times help explain some o f the semantic differences that will be described below. (Freed 1979: 109)

Since this arises in a great m any examples w ith help, one m ight well w onder w hether the tw o infinitives do express different meanings here. Indeed, most grammarians claim that there is ab­ solutely no difference in m eaning betw een the tw o construc­ tions, the only contrast being that the bare infinitive is m ore colloquial, or m ore American (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 1206). W hile it is true to say that the bare infinitive is m ore frequent in American English — Algeo (1988: 22) found that the Brow n University Corpus has only 25 per cent usage o f to infinitives after help w here the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus has 73 per cent - this begs the question nevertheless because both the bare and the to infinitives are used on both sides o f the Atlantic. This means that the problem o f w hether they can be used to make distinctions o f m eaning is a real one and must be addressed, in­ stead o f merely alleging geographical distribution as the explanation for infinitival usage with this verb. This is all the more requisite as there are certain uses in which the to infinitive cannot be sub­ stituted for the bare form (e.g. (13)) and, vice versa, where the bare infinitive cannot replace its counterpart with to, as in (14). (13)

Mrs A rthur Goldberg, wife o f the Secretary o f Labour, paints professionally and helps sponsor the Associated Ar­ tists’ Gallery in the District o f Columbia. (BUC F29 0420 2)

(14)

T he Bonaventure was quivering and lurching like an old spavined mare. H er stem was dow n and a sharp list helped us to cut loose the lifeboat, w hich dropped heav­ ily into the water. (BUC N21 0150 14)

Such uses suggest very strongly that there is in fact a difference in m eaning betw een the tw o constructions. T he existence o f a m eaning distinction is backed up further­ m ore by the opinions o f a certain num ber o f grammarians w ho

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

25

all have m ore or less similar impressions as to the nature o f the semantic contrast here. C om m enting on the contrast betw een zero and to in the sentence W ill you help me get (to get) these letters addressed?, Erades (1950: 123), for example, observes that while the sentence w ith the bare infinitive ‘can only m ean one thing, viz. W ill you share w ith m e the w ork o f addressing them ?’, that w ith the to infinitive allows the interpretation that ‘the help may be afforded by some other means, such as relieving the speaker o f other duties or tasks’. W ood (1962: 107-8) says almost the same thing: to can be om itted after help ‘only w hen the ‘helper’ does some o f the work, or shares in the activity jointly w ith the person that is helped’. Christophersen and Sandved (1969: 149) point out that help is ‘nearly always’ used with to w hen it means ‘contribute to’, as in This helps to make our life bearable. Bolinger (1974: 75) presents the difference between (15a) and (15b) below as one o f ‘immediate’ vs ‘mediate’ assistance: (15a)

H e helped me climb the stairs by propping m e up w ith his shoulder (He climbed w ith me).

(15b)

H e helped m e to climb the stairs by cheering m e on.

And Gee (1975: 311) argues that whereas in I helped them carry the load ‘I take part in the carrying’, this is not necessarily im ­ plied by the sentence w ith to, where ‘I need not actually have done any carrying’, as shown by: (16a)

I helped them to carry the load by having m y secretary get them a cart.

(16b)

* I helped them carry the load by having m y secretary get them a cart.

T he consensus then is m ore or less that help + bare infinitive is used w hen the helper participates directly in the activity for w hich he is giving assistance, while help + to is preferred w hen the assistance is felt as mediate or indirect. Examples from our corpus confirm these observations but show that the fine betw een mediate and immediate assistance is not always as easy to draw as Erades and W ood make it out to

26

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

be. Thus there are clear cases o f indirect assistance, such as (14) above (where the bare infinitive sounds strange because ‘a sharp list’ cannot participate in the action o f ‘cutting loose’, but rather must be conceived as providing a necessary condition for its realization). T he same sort o f thing is true o f (17)—(20) below: (17)

By 1853, the new partnership announced the precision vernier calliper as the first fruit o f their jo in t efforts. T he basic significance o f this invention helped them to follow it rapidly in 1855 by the developm ent o f a unique precision gear cutting and dividing engine. (BU C H 26 0490 5)

(18)

It [= the whisky] helped m e to be brave. (Fleming 1970: 159; in Lind 1983: 270)

(19)

T he whisky helped m e not to stagger under the blow. (Fleming 1971: 134; in Lind 1983: 270)

(20)

But it [= w hat was said] had helped to panic him. (Clifford 1969: 124; in Lind 1983: 270)

T he use o f the bare infinitive in any o f the above cases w ould make the subject o f help seem too active. It is no coincidence that the subject refers to an inanimate being in all five sentences w here only to is appropriate ((14) and (17)—(20)). Lind (1983: 270) has pointed out that in his corpus the to infinitive is six times m ore frequent than the bare form w ith inanimates. There are fewer contexts where only the bare infinitive seems appropriate. Besides (13) above, the following tw o uses have been found: (21)

. . . its members will supplement technical advisers by offering the specific skills needed by developing nations. . . . . T hey will help provide the skilled m an-power necessary to carry out the development project . . . (BU C H19 1800 6)

(22)

W eld contributed to the anti-slavery convictions o f such m en as . . ., and helped provide ideas w hich

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

27

underlay Harriet Beecher Stow ’s Uncle Tom's Cabin. (BUC D14 1780 6) In all three cases, it seems hard to conceive helping in any other way than as doing part o f the activity denoted by the infinitive oneself9 These sentences support Erades’s and W ood’s intuitions about the m eaning o f the bare infinitive construction. There is a broad grey area betw een the tw o poles represented by (17)-(20) and (21)-(22), however, w here both constructions make fairly good sense. Concretely, Erades’s and W ood’s charac­ terization o f the bare infinitive structure as evoking the helper as taking part o f the w ork upon himself is too restrictive. This has been pointed out by Lind (1983: 271), w ho adduces the follow­ ing examples to show that there is ‘no correlation betw een ac­ tive participation and omission o f to’: (23)

. . . he said briefly, helping me climb in through the rear window. (Francis 1971: 173)

(24)

H e put a hand under her elbow and helped her stumble the few steps she had to take. (Alexander 1970: 90)

(25)

H e . . . helped her sit down. (Lait 1970: 148)

T he helper obviously did not do part o f the actions denoted by the infinitives in these sentences. This is not the case w hen the bare infinitive construction occurs w ith an inanimate subject either: despite W ood’s contention that ‘we could scarcely say These tablets will help you sleep’, since the tablets, being inanimate, ‘cannot do part o f the sleeping’, the following have been found: (26)

That [= the injection] was to help you relax. (Voss Bark 1968: 127; in Lind 1983: 271)

(27)

I have given him something [= some kind o f drug] that should help him come round. (Markham 1970: 28; in Lind 1983: 271)

28

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

(28)

You never gave inform ation w hich m ight help others get in ahead o f you. (Canning 1971: 163; in Lind 1983: 271)

(29)

I hope these pointers will help you discharge your new duties according to the traditions o f your department. (Brophy 1966: 60; in Visser 1973: 2320)

In none o f these cases can the inanimate subject o f help be con­ ceived as relaxing, com ing round, getting in ahead o f someone or discharging duties. And yet the bare infinitive has been chosen by the speaker. A better characterization o f the m eaning o f the bare infinitive structure in these uses is that it evokes ‘helping’ as direct or active involvem ent in the bringing into being o f the action denoted by the infinitive. Thus drugs can be said to act on people and relax them (26) or bring them around (27); informa­ tion can put some people in a favourable position w ith respect to others (28); and pointers can be seen as guiding people (i.e. as som ehow active or operative) in the proper discharge o f their duties. In contrast, help + to evokes help as a condition w hich enables the helpee to realize the event denoted by the infinitive. T he tw o views are practical equivalents in m ost contexts, but the existence o f a distinction shows through in cases such as (13) and (14) above. As w ith have, therefore, the bare infinitive after help denotes an event w hich is actually realized. How ever, unlike the uses seen w ith have, the to infinitive does not evoke an unrealized objective or goal, but rather an event w hich is actually accom­ plished. Its actual m eaning here corresponds therefore to an in­ terception o f to at the final point o f its m ovem ent. Sentence (14) above can therefore be diagrammed in the following way: to AFTER

BEFORE

(helped)

(cut loose the lifeboat)

TH E IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

29

As for the presence o f a before/after relation, the impression that comes through constantly w ith the use o f to is that the infinitive event is depicted as a consequence or result o f the action o f help­ ing. T he helping is represented therefore as a prior condition or circumstance w hich enables someone to realize the action denoted by the infinitive. This has proven to be the case in all o f the uses o f to examined to date. T he bare infinitive, in con­ trast, represents its event as an object o f co-operation betw een the helper and the helpee: even though this close co-operation does not always involve the helper actually doing part o f the helpee’s activity for him it seems to imply a view o f the helper as instrumental in the realization o f the infinitive’s event. This excludes a relationship o f ‘before’ to ‘after’ betw een the helping and the event w hich is realized thanks to the help, and explains the occurrence o f the bare form o f the infinitive.

2 .4 T H E I N F I N I T I V E A F T E R V E R B S O F PE R C E PT IO N Usage in the active

A before/after sequence w ould also appear to be excluded from the representation o f the relation betw een the event o f the main verb and that o f the infinitive in the case o f the verbs o f perception. In a sentence such as (30), the event saw obviously cannot be conceived as existing before the beginning o f the crossing: (30)

I saw him cross the street.

T he impression here is similar therefore to that already observed w ith have denoting ‘experience’. This impression o f coincidence in time betw een the action o f perceiving and the event per­ ceived is com m on to all the various verbs o f perception: (31)

‘Look out for those movers!’ W inston watched him hurry dow n the drive to his car. (BUC K28 0790 2)

30

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

(32)

I heard soft padding steps approach. (Marchant 1954: 136; in Scheurweghs 1959: 239)

(33)

I was on m y beat . . . w hen I observed this young m an . . . run out o f the door. (Crofts 1925: 11; in Visser 1973: 2253)

(34)

N o one noticed them arrive. (Hughes 1929: 125; in Visser 1973: 2253)

(35)

H e felt his hair stand on end. (Mansfield 1924: 213; in Jespersen 1940: 281)

Surprisingly, however, all these verbs (except, apparently, watch10) can also be construed w ith the to infinitive: (36)

I saw them to be obnoxious. (Bolinger 1974: 66)

(37)

Seeing flight to be impossible, he surrendered.

(Jespersen 1940: 280) (38)

I have observed the result o f our disputes to be almost uniformly this. (Lamb 1823: 106; in Visser 1973: 2253)

(39)

A hand w hich I noticed to be surprisingly powerful. (Hughes 1961: 30; in Visser 1973: 2253)

(40)

‘Com e, com e’, cried Emma, feeling this to be an unsafe subject. (Ward 1915: 101; in Visser 1973: 2251)

(41)

W e m ight hear him by his blow ing to be a monstrous, huge and furious beast. (Defoe 1719: 27; in Jespersen 1940: 281)

If the tendency observed w ith have and help holds true here, the to infinitive should evoke its event as som ehow subsequent to that o f the verb o f perception in these sentences. Pertinent com ­

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VER BS

31

ments made by linguists and grammarians all focus how ever on the m eaning o f the verb o f perception alone. Everyone agrees that w hen the to infinitive is substituted for the zero form, verbs o f perception undergo a lexical shift. Pal­ m er (1988: 199) proposes that w hen followed by the to infini­ tive, verbs o f perception function as verbs o f reporting, so that H e saw the children to be eating their lunch means ‘H e reported the children to be eating their lunch’. This paraphrase is not entirely appropriate as a description o f the m eaning expressed however; Jespersen (1940: 280) does a better jo b o f it w hen he charac­ terizes the sense o f see w ith the bare infinitive as that o f ‘im m e­ diate perception’, and its sense w ith the to infinitive as that o f ‘inference’. 1 T he lexical shift from immediate perception to in­ ference is perhaps most obvious w ith the verb feel : w ith the to infinitive, as in (40) above, this verb is practically the equivalent o f think. Likewise in (36) saw evokes not mere visual perception but rather an inference w hich the speaker has drawn about the character o f the people in question on the basis o f w hat he has been able to observe o f their behaviour or even o f their appear­ ance, and so could be said by someone w ho had only seen a photograph o f them . As Bolinger (1974: 66) points out, see refers here to the mental apprehension o f a fact, the realization that they were obnoxious, whereas I saw them be obnoxious w ould simply m ean ‘I beheld their obnoxious behaviour’. Similar com ­ ments could be made about all the other examples given above. Bolinger points out furtherm ore that the use o f the to infini­ tive after verbs o f perception w hen they shift to the inferential sense fits into an overall pattern w ith the object + infinitive construction. All conceptual verbs (evoking notions such as be­ lieving, proving, judging, understanding, discovering, assuming, inferring, saying) refuse the bare infinitive: (42) (43) (44)

I believe him be the man. * W e thought it be the right choice. Can you prove it happen? (Bolinger 1974: 66)

T he to infinitive is called for w ith such verbs, so it is not surpris­

32

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

ing that perceptual verbs should take to before the infinitive w hen used in the m ore conceptual inferential sense. Bolinger does not m ention it, but the opposite is also true: exclusively perceptual verbs refuse the to infinitive. This is the case w ith the verb watch, w hich is never found in constructions w ith to: (45)

* I watched them to be obnoxious.

Its exclusively perceptual m eaning also bars it from being con­ strued w ith a that-c lause, whereas this construction is a close equivalent o f the to infinitive w ith verbs o f perception in their conceptual use: (46) (47)

* I watched that they were obnoxious. I saw (observed, noticed, felt) that they were obnox­ ious.

T he that-c lause is also characteristic o f the class o f purely con­ ceptual verbs: (48)

I believed (proved, understood, discovered, assumed, inferred) that he was there.

It evokes a fact, i.e. an object o f conception, rather than an object o f perception. T he reason for the verbs o f perception being construed w ith to in their conceptual sense is suggested by comments m ade by C otte (1982b) and Gramley (1987). T he first author shows quite clearly that the idea o f inference or mental perception is con­ nected to an impression o f ‘afterness’ or subsequence, as are all the other uses w ith to w hich we have seen up to this point. C om m enting on the sentence H e saw flight to be impossible, C otte observes (p. 71): Ici, pas de perception physique, mais un jugem ent sur flight, pose avant be impossible, qui lui est attribue au term e d ’une reflexion; to s’impose car la deuxieme predication n ’est pas un donne per^u globalement et existant independam m ent de see,

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

33

mais une construction dont l’actualite n ’est posee q u ’en guise de conclusion. Gramley (p. 20) seems to be on m uch the same track w hen he notes, concerning I saw the library to have burned down: W hat the speaker saw was not an occurrence, but physical evidence for a condition, a state; for example, the speaker saw the site, the ruins. [To the sentence above] the question may be asked, ‘H ow do you know ?’ This is appropriate because states are cognitively concluded to exist in the real world on the basis o f evidence o f some kind. A perceived event then is not in the same relation to the act o f perceiving it as an inferred event is to the act o f inferring it. T he form er exists throughout the process o f perception; the latter, however, has no existence before being conceived by the m ind, and exists only as a conclusion w hich arises as a result of, after, the mental operation o f inferring that the state o f affairs it de­ scribes is true. In the example given by Cotte, the impossibility o f fleeing is not something w hich is immediately perceivable by the sense o f vision. Although it may have taken only an instant, the person to w hom this sentence refers had to make the logical jum p from what he could see o f the possible escape routes open to him to the realization that flight was impossible. T he discovery o f the impossibility o f fleeing thus comes after the mental process o f sizing up the situation denoted by saw , and this calls for the use o f to. T he above explanation holds for all the verbs o f perception. It also permits us to understand w hy only to is used w ith a verb such as discern: (49)

W e discerned it to be a man. (Smollett 1748: 458; in Visser 1973: 2250)

Discerning involves drawing a conclusion as to the identity o f an object based on careful scrutiny. R ecognition o f the identity o f something takes place in the m ind, not in the senses, and there­ fore implies a previous (though perhaps almost instantaneous) mental process.

34

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

W e can now account m oreover for the observation made by Poutsma (1923: 41) that a perfect infinitive is always preceded by to w hen used w ith a verb o f perception: (50)

M r Lorry observed a great change to have come over the doctor (and not * observed a great change have come over the doctor).

(Dickens, no reference given) In the context above, M r Lorry did not perceive the actual change itself as it came over the doctor. W hat he perceived was rather the state o f the doctor and he inferred from this that a change must have taken place at some tim e before that m om ent. Thus observe has the m eaning o f mental inference and the to infinitive denotes the conclusion drawn from w hat was directly perceived. Indeed this corresponds exactly to the m eaning o f the perfect infinitive, w hich does not evoke the event come directly but rather indirectly, through the result phase w hich this event leaves behind it in time. T he perfect infinitive thus presents an event — a result phase - not as something w hich is itself direcdy perceived but rather as something w hich is inferred from a com ­ parison o f w hat is directly observed — the present state o f the doctor —w ith w hat was observed at some earlier m om ent. O ne difficulty encountered in verifying the explanation pro­ posed above is a pair o f sentences w ith the to infinitive cited by van Ek (1966: 151) as examples o f ‘see denoting physical rather than mental perception’: (51)

It (viz. Mrs B .’s death) m ight be soon, for I can see w orthy Mrs B onner to be breaking visibly. (Meredith 1861: 204)

(52)

In less than a generation, the male population shed their finery and cosmetics for the eclipse plumage o f m odern times. T he change happened under the guid­ ance o f Beau Brum m el, though Fox, according to Wraxall, had ‘first throw n a sort o f discredit on dress’ — and this great alteration, w hich Walpole had seen to begin, took place w ithin the Age o f Scandal. (W hite 1966: 21)

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

35

T he first example is not a real problem because van Ek has mis­ construed it. Like all the other uses o f see + to infinitive denot­ ing inference, the sentence above can be paraphrased by means o f a that- clause: (53)

It m ight be soon, for I can see that Mrs B onner is breaking visibly.

See thus evokes the apprehension o f a fact, something w hich involves an interpretation o f the external symptoms captured by the senses: from w hat he can see, the speaker has concluded that Mrs Bonner is breaking visibly. This factual value w ould give way to one o f perception o f an ongoing phenom enon if the to infinitive were dropped:

(54)

I can see Mrs B onner breaking visibly.

T he use o f the to infinitive in the second example is m ore diffi­ cult to account for. A careful examination o f the full context, however, suggests that see may well denote mental inference here as well. T he author o f the book from w hich this passage is taken (W hite 1966) situates the beginning o f the ‘great alter­ ation’ in dress in 1793, only four years before W alpole’s death, so that it is hardly likely that anyone could directly perceive such a major change in this short stretch o f time. M oreover, Walpole, described in the same book (p. 83) as someone w ho ‘thrived on gossip, and on playing at loo or at hazard w ith a duchess or tw o ’, could very well have been a sufficiently astute observer o f social mores to deduce that the first manifestations w hich he had seen o f the new way o f dressing constituted the beginning o f a m ajor trend. Thus it is quite ^plausible to suggest that see evokes some form o f inference here. An examination o f the actual m eaning expressed by the to infinitive after verbs o f perception in the active voice shows therefore a necessary before/after relationship betw een the event o f the verb o f perception (which has shifted to evoke the notion o f inference) and the event o f the infinitive (which denotes the conclusion reached by means o f the inference). This sequential representation, on the other hand, does not characterize the verbs o f perception in their basic perceptual sense, where the

36

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

relation is rather one o f coincidence in time betw een the per­ ceiving and the phenom enon being perceived. Since the inference sense o f the verbs o f perception implies that the conclusion inferred is actually reached, this use o f the infinitive involves a final inter­ ception o f to. The diagram corresponding to (36) is therefore: to BEFORE

AFTER

(saw — ‘concluded that1)

(he obnoxious)

W ith the above analysis we can now account for the paradoxi­ cal fact that the verb perceive is found m ore frequently w ith the to infinitive than w ith the bare version: (55)

N o one could possibly enter his rooms w ithout perceiv­ ing him to be a man o f wealth. (Galsworthy 1909: 43; in van Ek 1966: 132)

(56)

. . . the reactionary, for w hatever m otive, perceives himself to be a part or a partner o f something that ex­ tended beyond himself . . . (BUC G25 1790 8)

T he reason is simply that since its m eaning is m ore abstract than that o f see, hear, watch, etc., it lends itself m ore easily to the inference-type sense than do the latter. Thus in (55) and (56) above, the £/*^-dause paraphrase is quite appropriate, and in (56) perceive is practically equivalent in m eaning to think. Perceive can still occur in the sense o f physical perception, however, as can be seen from: (57)

It was w ith some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach.

(C. B ronte 1848: 188; in Jespersen 1940: 280) (58)

H e had perceived one hum an being after another reveal quite nakedly their tum ultuous feelings. (Walpole 1914; in van Ek 1966: 131)

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

37

Usage in the passive

U nlike the active voice, the passive poses a problem w ith verbs o f perception, since the distribution o f the infinitive appears to be in systematic contradiction w ith w hat is observed above. In the passive, verbs o f perception almost always take the to infini­ tive: (59)

H e was seen to enter the building at 10:00.

(60)

She was heard to shut the door a few minutes later.

This occurs even though they apparently retain the ‘true’ m eaning o f physical perception. T he sort o f problem we are addressing here — finding a se­ mantic explanation for the distribution o f the infinitive after verbs o f perception in the passive — is treated in a diametrically opposite way by formal-grammar truth-semantics accounts such as that o f Higgenbotham 1983. T he latter declares John was seen leave ungrammatical because the embedded clause seen leave is ‘unsupported’, i.e. constitutes ‘a subject—predicate sequence that exhibits none o f the internal inflectional structures o f a full sen­ tence or clausal com plem entation’ (i.e. neither tense, nor infi­ nitival to, nor progressive -ing), whereas John was seen to leave is said to be grammatical because here leave is ‘supported’ (by to), and can therefore serve as an argum ent for the verb see (pp. 123—4). Overlooking the causal nature o f m eaning w ith respect to usage leads here to obvious circularity w ithin the formal fram ework however: to is first defined as necessary to support a clausal com plem ent w ith no discussion o f the data w hich contra­ dict this postulate (cf She helped lift him out o f the bed; You've missed things. Or not been let run up against them), and then the ‘ungrammaticality’ o f John was seen leave is explained by the ab­ sence o f to. T he approach taken here does not afford us the luxury o f such explanations: w e must seek the reason for the peculiar distribution o f the infinitive w ith perception verbs in the passive voice in the m eaning expressed by the sentence. A first clue that the meaning-relations are not the same in the active and passive voices is the existence o f a certain controversy about the m eaning o f the passive construction, something one

38

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

does not find in the case o f the active. Thus while both H iggenbotham (1983: 124) and Palmer (1988: 189) feel that a sentence such as John was seen to leave has the reporting ‘see that’ m eaning (i.e. ‘Somebody saw that John left’), M ittw och (1990: 121) points out that if this were the case one w ould expect the per­ fect form o f the infinitive to be completely acceptable and com ­ plem ent negation to be considerably better in a passive sentence than in the corresponding active one, w hich is not the case in (61) and (62): (61)

?John was seen to have left.

(62)

John was seen not to leave.

Bolinger (1974: 86-7) seems to side w ith Palmer and H iggenbotham , for he maintains that the to infinitive evokes not a per­ ception but rather a fact: T he passive tends to be used in situations w here the interest is not in perceptions but in impersonal facts — for example, in the testimony o f a witness w ho says H e was seen to stoop over and pick up some object, and then stuff it in his pocket. H ow ever he does not go so far as to paraphrase by ‘see that’, as does Palmer. I too hesitate to identify the m eaning o f John was seen to leave as ‘Som ebody saw that John left’. T he passive is certainly m ore impersonal and factual than the active construction but neverthe­ less one feels that an analysis such as that o f Palmer and Higgenbotham , w hich equates He was seen to walk away and H e was seen to be walking away as both having the reporting ‘see that’ meaning, loses sight o f a slight but real semantic distinction. This distinction manifests itself in the fact that the ‘see that’ paraphrase fits the second sentence very well but is very awkward for the first. Indeed the second sentence seems to be merely the passive reformulation o f w hat is expressed by Someone saw him to be walking away , w ith the inferential or conceptual sense o f see rather than the perceptual one. The following, all paraphrasable by that-c lauses (paraphrases are given in brackets after each one), are also examples o f this:

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

(63)

39

In the first stage o f cellular reproduction the chrom o­ somes (which in the resting stage are not individually identifiable) appear in the nucleus, each o f w hich on inspection w ith a microscope can be seen to consist o f two identical filaments called chromatids. (Isaacs 1963: 90; in van Ek 1966: 155) (‘on inspection w ith a microscope it can be seen that each nucleus consists o f tw o identical filaments’)

(64)

. . . and w hat is m ore the ideas themselves, if we are not too overawed by the empressement w ith which they are presented, on examination are seen to be not so very original after all. (Ford 1961: 491; in van Ek 1966: 155) (‘on examination it is seen that these ideas are not so very original after all’)

(65)

Justice must not only be done — ( . . . ) — but must manifestly be seen to be done. (Cecil 1962: 154; in van Ek 1966: 155) (‘people must also see that justice is being done’)

(66)

. . . she must make it plain before the evening begins that some or all o f the financial responsibility for it will be hers. An argum ent over the restaurant bill or at the cinema box office is humiliating and undignified for a man, and her good manners must save him from being put in such a situation. Similarly, since most m en like to be seen to do the paying it is a tactful precaution if, at the start of the evening out, she gives him the theatre tickets ‘to take care o f . . . (LOB F08 77 8) (‘most m en like people to see that they are the ones w ho do the paying’)

T he sentence H e was seen to walk away, on the other hand, seems to reformulate passively the content o f Somebody saw him walk away, w ith see being apparently used in its perceptual sense in both the active and the passive constructions.

40

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

In order to discern the reason for the use o f to w ith the in­ finitive in passive sentences o f the type just m entioned, we must begin therefore by trying to observe the kind o f m eaning which these sentences express and the type o f context in w hich they are used. Be seen to is found quite often for instance in the sort o f context alluded to by Bolinger in w hich one gets the impress­ ion that someone is establishing the facts: (67)

N obody had been seen to enter the house or leave it. (Faure and Casanova 1968: 322)

(68)

Ianthe Ambrose could have gone overboard any time after 9.10, w hen she was seen to leave the lecture, and on her ow n statement she had been no swimmer. (Blake 1961: 96; in van Ek 1966: 155)

(69)

Take Gardner Willings. H e had left after the scuffle; had been seen to leave.

(BUC L14 0800 7) T he passive o f hear is also often used to present an occurrence as an attested fact: (70)

This term was also used by the cowboy in the sense o f a hum an show in’ fight, as one cowboy was heard to say , he arches his back like a mule in a hailstorm. (BUC F35 0350 1)

(71)

‘W ashington’, President Kennedy has been heard to re­ mark ironically, ‘is a city o f southern efficiency and northern charm ’. (BUC F19 1240 3)

(72)

This was the last tim e in his life that he was heard to raise his voice. H enceforth he spoke always in a m ono­ tonous whisper . . . Q. Conrad 1895: 246)

(73)

T he m an paused to distribute dazzling smiles to the customers, and Mrs Hale was heard to mutter, ‘T he Billy

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

41

Butlin o f the Aegean. H e ’ll be calling us ‘lads and lasses’ any m om ent’. (Blake 1961: 25; in van Ek 1966: 89) (74)

M cKinley was overhead to say that he w ould like to get the knife into Spencer’s possessions . . . (BU C P07 0280 5)

All the above cases, typical o f the construction we are studying, give the impression that the speaker’s intent is to assert the oc­ currence o f the infinitive event as a fact. T he impression just described can be related m oreover to the before/after idea w hich to has been seen to express in its other uses. W e will argue that in uses such as these perception is being evoked only inasmuch as the act o f perception is the condition allowing one to assert that the infinitive event actually occurred. Perceiving is therefore not thought o f as an instant-by-instant following o f a phenom enon w ith the senses, but rather as a con­ dition (conceived as an abstract before-position) from whose ex­ istence the occurrence o f the infinitive action can be inferred resultatively or factually, the latter being conceived therefore as an after-position. This explains w hy the to infinitive is used here and not the bare form. T he view just proposed accounts for the rather curious fact that there are no passive constructions followed by the to infini­ tive w ith the verb watch, as both Fries (1964: 21) and M ittw och (1990: 119) have pointed out: (75) (76)

H e was seen to cross the street. * H e was watched to cross the street.

This is perfectly understandable if in fact after passives the to infinitive evokes a mental construct. It was shown above (cf. (45)) that watch can only evoke a process o f voluntarily laying hold o f sense data by means o f visual perception. See, on the other hand, because it can evoke the bare fact o f visual percep­ tion, is capable o f evoking perception merely as a cause o f knowledge and no m ore than that. T he following example o f the verb hear, while not equivalent

42

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

to ‘is reported to have’, represents another case w here perception is evoked merely as the condition for asserting a fact: (77)

W ith these words, M r W eller left the room , and im m e­ diately afterwards was heard to shut the street-door. (Dickens 1890: 423)

Although the expressive effect is not easy to pinpoint, one can detect an impression o f resultativity, as though the passiveab­ stracts from any particular hearer so that the infinitive evokes the resulting impression that was left w ith all present. M r W eller may not have actually been the one w ho shut the door but it was inferred from w hat was heard that he was. T he abstraction from any particular perceiver and consequent presentation o f a collective resulting impression can also be felt in the following stage direction: (78)

They go out, w hereupon John is seen to slightly push aside the portiere and peep into the room . Satisfied that the room is empty, he enters quickly, closes the door behind him emphatically, and throws him self on the settee w ith a groan o f weariness. (Pinero 1895: 263; in Jespersen 1940: 315)

Here the actual process o f perception by the audience is less im­ portant than the knowledge resulting from perception which the playwright wants the audience to receive at this point in the play. In (79) it is not just the action itself which is asserted: (79)

H e had a singular red cap on — not like a sailor’s cap, but o f a finer colour; and as the few yielding planks betw een him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was seen by all o f us to wave it. (Dickens 1850: 404)

T he to infinitive here asserts an occurrence not just as an attested fact but as a significant fact, something w hich tells one about the character o f the subject. This recalls M ittw och’s observation (1990: 118) that w ith hear ‘there seems to be a constraint that

THE IN FINITIVE IN C ID E N T TO FULL VERBS

43

the sound perceived must be naturally associated w ith, and attri­ butable to, the referent o f the infinitival subject’: (80)

She was heard to mutter a curse under her breath / sing the national anthem.

(81)

? T he branch was heard to snap.

By making the direct object o f the active construction into the subject o f the passive, as in (80) above, it becomes, according to our analysis, the topic o f predication to w hich the infinitive event is attributed on the basis o f the occurrence o f perception. This implies o f course that the infinitive event’s realization by the subject has to constitute sufficiently significant information about the referent w hich the latter refers to for the sentence to be w orth uttering. This analysis is confirmed by another fact w hich M ittw och does not point out — the constraint she de­ scribes does not apply to subjects w ith indefinite reference, as can be seen from (82), w hich is m uch better than (81) above: (82)

A branch was heard to snap,

T he explanation proposed here accounts for this fact in the fol­ low ing way. Sentences w ith subjects having definite referents, such as (80), assert the definite referent’s having perform ed the infinitival event based on the fact that perception o f this event took place, and, as stated above, this means that the definite referent’s having perform ed this action must be significant enough to be stated as a fact (known through the perceptual event having taken place). A sentence w ith an indefinite refer­ ent, such as (82), on the other hand, simply asserts that there was a snap (based on the fact that a perceptual event took place): because the subject’s referent is indefinite it is the m ere occur­ rence o f the infinitival event and not its realization by a certain person or thing w hich constitutes sufficiently significant informa­ tion here, w hence the acceptability o f such uses. In the following tw o examples the vocabulary itself suggests an inference beyond w hat is strictly perceivable: (83)

H e may be seen, as he enquires o f an official the tim e o f

44

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

the next train, to summon up the semblance o f a smile. (The Times, 17 M arch 1955, in Scheurweghs 1959: 241) (84)

T he tune was heard to come from no further away than w here the track slings around the shoulder o f the hill. (Pudney 1954: 39; in Scheurweghs 1959: 240)

O ne can observe the expression o f a person’s face, in this case a faint smile, but not the effort he makes to produce it, the sum­ m oning up. Likewise in (84) one cannot hear a tune ‘com e’ from somewhere (cf. the strangeness o f I heard the tune come from the top o f the hilt): its source o f emission can only be identified by a process o f deduction w hich interprets w hat is directly observed in order to arrive at the conclusion that the sound is com ing from such-and-such a point. Hear approaches therefore the sense o f judge in this context, a shift which justifies the to infinitive. Some affirmative uses give a slightly different impression from that o f being able to assert the occurrence o f an event because o f its having been perceived —a suggestion that there is a difference betw een w hat perception w ould lead one to think and the way things really are: (85)

O nce again the direction in which something is seen to move m ight depend upon the ratios o f firing in cells sensitive to m ovem ent in different directions, and after prolonged m ovem ent in one direction a stationary image w ould produce less firing in the cell w hich had just been stimulated m ore than normally, hence appar­ ent m ovem ent in the opposite direction w ould he seen to occur. This explanation o f Figural After Effects is based on . . . (L O B J25 179 10)

(86)

. . . O sgood gives considerable regard and space to a paper by B row n and Voth (1937) on apparent m ove­ m ent, in w hich an experiment is described w here four lights disposed at the corners o f a square are flashed on and off successively, going round the square. Bartley (1941) also devotes some pages to this. According to these authors, w hen the interval betw een successive

THE IN FINITIVE IN C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

45

lights in such a set-up is around 150 millisec., a single light is seen to describe a circle. (Sylvester 1960: 231) (87)

H e appears to be unaware o f after-image phenom ena and, so far as I can make out, puts forward an explana­ tion, instead, w hich says that m ovem ent can be per­ ceived w hen no object is seen to move! Presumably the reason w hy the lights appear stationary while the ‘ghost’ is seen to revolve is that during the duration of any light the stimulus from it is accompanied by fused after-images o f the other three. (Sylvester 1960: 236)

H ere also how ever it can be shown that the event see is thought as logically anterior to the event denoted by the infinitive. In­ deed this is w hat accounts for the impression given by this type o f use that there is a difference betw een what was perceived and what actually happened. Perception is not conceived as a direct grasping o f an occurrence here but rather as the means by w hich the perceiver obtains a resulting impression w hich may or may not correspond to w hat actually happened. All o f the above con­ texts represent cases where the physical stimuli captured by the sense organs produce a false impression in the person sensing. This usage is therefore closely related to the other uses w here the to infinitive evokes a result (the knowledge resulting from perception). T he only difference is that whereas in the cases seen previously (59)—(84), perception is represented as giving rise to true knowledge, in (85)—(87) above it is depicted as giving rise to a false impression. In both cases how ever the infinitive evokes a result —something therefore w hich is conceived as com ing after the actual operation o f perception. T he evidence thus confirms the intuition felt by Palmer and others that the verbs o f perception evoke something m ore con­ ceptual in the passive. W e have seen above that this involves a shift from the concrete perceptual m eaning o f ‘following a phe­ nom enon w ith the senses’ to viewing perception merely as the basis for asserting that the infinitive’s event really took place. T he extremely rare use o f the bare infinitive w ith the passive o f perceptual verbs adds further p ro o f that this is the case.

46

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

Although only two attested examples o f this usage have been found in m odern English, the contrast betw een the bare and the to infinitive in these contexts confirms the percept/concept dis­ tinction observed above: (88)

(89)

T he smallest pin could be heard drop. (Literary World , 9 N ovem ber 1889: 381; in Poutsma 1926: 432) N o t only a pin, even a dead mosquito, m ight havebeen heard drop.

(Gerard 1913: 217; in Poutsma 1923: 48) As w ould have been expected, the construction w ith the bare infinitive expresses direct perception o f an event — to be m ore precise, the possibility o f direct perception (because o f could and might have). T he sentences above evoke a silence w hich was so absolute that the perception o f a pin or a dead mosquito drop­ ping to the floor was possible. T he substitution o f the to infinitive, possible only in (88), w ould create a very different effect: (90)

T he smallest pin could be heard to drop.

In order to give m eaning to this sentence one w ould have to imagine a situation such as the following: someone was sorting pins o f different sizes on a table; w ithout him seeing it, the smallest o f these pins fell off the table and was heard to hit the floor by those present in the room . This shows that the to infini­ tive necessarily implies the assertion that the pin actually dropped. In other words, the sentence w ith to asserts drop as a fact and perception is invoked merely as the means w hich has brought one to the knowledge o f this fact: perception took place; therefore the dropping can be inferred and asserted. This places one in the domain o f knowledge or facts and the perceiving necessarily precedes the logical conclusion to which it gives rise. This is probably why, alongside the num erous examples o f be seen to and be heard to in the affirmative, none have been found in the negative:

THE IN FINITIVE IN C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

(91) (92)

47

* H e wasn’t seen to cross the street. H e wasn’t heard to say that Bill was looking for trouble.

W hile the fact that a phenom enon was perceived allows one to infer and assert that it actually occurred, the converse is not true: the fact that it was not perceived does not mean that it did not take place. N o t perceiving something does not prove anything. This can be illustrated by a sentence in the active such as They didn’t see him cross the street, w hich in fact usually implies that he did cross the street, even though he was not seen doing it. Since the negative passive construction w ith the to infinitive w ould imply that the non-occurrence o f the infinitive event was being inferred and asserted from the absence o f perception, it is not normally used by speakers o f English.14 Thus w ith perceptual verbs in the passive, the to infinitive involves a subtle shifting o f the perceptual verb into the concep­ tual field w ith the consequent evocation o f an inference and not just something directly perceived. T he passive evokes perception resultatively and not operationally and calls for a representation o f the p henom enon perceived as a fact, the know ledge and assertion o f w hich is a consequence o f perception having taken place, rath e r than as so m eth in g w h ich is follow ed in stan tby-instant by means o f the operation o f the sense faculties. This accounts for the use o f the to and not the bare infinitive here, the actual m eaning o f to in this type o f use being o f course the result o f a final interception, as in the case o f usage in the active.15

2 .5

TH E IN FIN ITIV E A FTER F IN D

T he verb fin d follows the same pattern as the verbs o f perception in its use w ith the infinitive. W hen used w ith the bare infinitive, it denotes a direct experiencing of, and so contem poraneity in time with, an occurrence and can often be replaced by see — although it denotes perception in a m ore abstract way than the latter —or by have in its experiential sense: (93)

R ather surprised to fin d them break fence at this season. (Mannin 1930: 39; in Kruisinga and Erades 1960: 357)

48

THE ENGLIS H IN FINIT IVE

(94)

. . . ‘suffering as usual’, but hoped, he told Arthur, ‘to fin d this place agree w ith m e better than Naples’. (LOB G06 29 11)

(95)

O utdoors you will fin d W ren create new green dim en­ sions w ith sensitive landscaping that creates a com ­ m unity and not just a row o f houses. (The Observer, 18 July 1965; in van Ek 1966: 68)

This use seems to be confined to British English. W hen used w ith the to infinitive, on the other hand, fin d denotes rather the discovery o f a fact: (96)

I measured the tail o f the dead rat, and found it to be tw o yards long. (Swift 1735: 308; injespersen 1940: 281)

Being tw o yards long is not an immediately perceivable attribute o f a rat’s tail since it requires a previous act o f measuring in order to be know n. Knowledge o f this fact being the result o f the finding, the to infinitive is required in order to evoke it in the subsequence o f the event o f discovering denoted by the m ain verb. Find’s use w ith the infinitive thus further confirms our hypothesis on the m eaning distinction betw een the tw o ver­ sions o f the infinitive.16

2 .6

TH E IN FIN ITIV E A FTER K N O W

Another verb w hich can take both infinitives is know . W e shall begin by discussing uses w here it expresses the m ere state o f being aware o f a fact, a sense w hich calls for the use o f the to and never the bare infinitive. T he following sentences taken from van Ek (1966: 104-5) illustrate this use: (97)

I knew him as a m an to be very m uch like myself. (Osborne 1962: 244)

(98)

. . . the nineteenth century ethos, w hich we now

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

49

know to have been less stable and free from doubt than was once imagined. (Ford 1961: 14)

(99)

. . . in civil or criminal cases you must not put for­ ward w hat you know to be a false case. (Cecil 1962: 142)

Com m ents on the m eaning o f this construction bring out an interesting contrast betw een the infinitive and a that-c lause, w hich will help to explain the use o f to before the infinitive here. All observers seem to agree that, as M air (1990: 200) puts it, ‘the infinitival construction generally serves to express a com ­ bination o f knowledge and subjective judgm ent’ while the thatclause expresses ‘plain know ledge’ (cf. also R iddle 1975: 471; D ixon 1984: 590; W ierzbicka 1988: 50-1). R egarding (100a) and (100b), R iddle observes for instance that (100a) ‘does not entail that the w om an in question is actually intelligent. It is merely an expression o f Jane’s opinion to that effect.’ (100a)

Jane knows her to be intelligent.

(100b)

Jane knows that she is intelligent,

In (100b) how ever ‘it seems that the w om an’s intelligence is attested to by an outside source. This sentence does entail that the w om an is intelligent.’ It will be argued here that the above-noted tendency o f the infinitival construction to imply greater subjectivity and possi­ bility o f doubt indicates that know is being evoked not just as the state o f ‘being aware o f a fact’ in these uses but also as the condition for being able to attribute to the direct object o f know the event denoted by the infinitive. This conditioning idea, ab­ sent in the that-clause construction, is w hat I believe accounts for the less factual tone o f the infinitival structure: explicitly evoking one’s knowledge as the condition allowing one to assert something (rather than flatly stating one’s awareness o f a fact) tends to suggest that w hat one is saying is a personal opinion rather than a m atter o f objective fact. It should be pointed out how ever that the to infinitive construction does not always imply

50

THE ENGLISH IN FINIT IVE

non-entailm ent o f the truth o f the com plem ent, as R iddle’s comments above m ight give one to understand. T he following have been found where the complement does seem to be entailed: (101)

She was charged w ith receiving the m ink-coat knowing it to have been stolen. (The Times , 30 April 1955; in van Ek 1966: 105)

(102)

Fortunately a gentleman was on the engine w ho knew the lad to be deaf . . . (LOB A40 160 7)

(103)

. . . the image o f the cloud was also in their minds. M oreover, they knew it to be a cloud. Yet they could ‘see’ animals in it. (LOB F01 137 1)

(104)

. . . he didn’t protest any m ore to say he loved her because he knew it to be untrue. (LOB K07 135 13)

W hile (104) does seem to imply something close to ‘feel’, in the other three cases know merely evokes what allowed the ‘knowers’ in question to identify the things or persons know n as stolen, deaf, or clouds. T he com m on denom inator o f this type o f use is not therefore non-entailm ent but rather viewing knowledge o f the referent denoted by the direct object o f know as a condition for attributing what the infinitive denotes to this referent.17 Since a condition has a logical priority w ith respect to w hat it allows, there is a before/after relation betw een what know predicates and what the infinitive does, w hich calls for the use o f to. The above explanation also allows a clearer view o f the relation between know and the other verbs which belong to the conceptual field, and shows why such verbs are all followed by to + infinitive. Take the examples o f these verbs suggested by Bolinger: (105)

I believe him to be the man.

(106)

W e thought it to be the right choice. (Bolinger 1974: 66)

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51

O ne observes that the only difference betw een these verbs and know lies in the type o f condition invoked as allowing one to represent the person or thing denoted by the direct object as being in the state denoted by the infinitive: knowledge vs belief or opinion. An example has even been found w here tw o kinds o f condition — and consequently tw o degrees o f certainty — are evoked w ith respect to the same event: (107)

O ne o f them knew , or anyhow guessed, the other to have caused the accident. (R. Macaulay 1920: 164; injespersen 1940: 282)

T he notion o f ‘the other having caused the accident’ is presented from tw o points o f view: how it is arrived at (by the process o f guessing), w hich is reminiscent in this respect o f fin d examined above; and how the notion is judged (it is considered to be a fact), the sense suggested by know. In each case, w hether represented as a guess or as a know n fact, the notion is seen as conditioned by a mental process or state w hich allows one to predicate it and so is represented as a consequence thereof by means o f the to infinitive. Know can also be followed by the bare infinitive, however, in a sense w hich is different from the one just discussed: (108)

Vve not known anything like this happen in the College

before. (Newby 1952: 179; in Scheurweghs 1959: 240) (109)

I had never known him ask a favour o f this kind before. (Snow 1961: 25; in van Ek 1966: 104)

All observers agree that here know does not express the mere awareness o f a fact, but functions rather as a verb o f perception (Jespersen 1940: 282; van Ek 1966: 104; Palmer 1988: 200); that is to say, here I have known means ‘I have actually experienced, seen, or heard’ (cf. Jespersen 1940). This use involves then a shift in the way know ing is conceived, from the static, resultative sort o f knowledge evoked by I knew it to be untrue to an operative view o f know ing as ‘directly experiencing’ something. These tw o ways o f viewing know can be diagrammed to show

52

THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

the relationship betw een them: Knowing as experiencing something directly OPERATION

(= obtaining knowledge)

Knowing as being aware o f a fact RESULT

(= possessing knowledge)

W hile know is not alone in being able to undergo such a shift (cf. Hirtle 1975: 37 for examples w ith realize, agree and understand), its m eaning places it in the unique position o f becom ing the equivalent o f a verb o f perception w hen it is used in the opera­ tive sense. This has obvious consequences for the use o f the infinitive: since operative know evokes the following o f the in­ finitive’s event from beginning to end through direct experience, there is no way to conceive know as existing before the beginning o f the event perceived, and therefore no to before the infinitive. There are certain limitations on the operative sense o f know w hich are not found w ith the verbs o f perception however: Q uirk et al. (1985: 1205) point out that ‘know followed by the bare infinitive is confined mainly to British English and to the perfective aspect’. W hile we cannot explain w hy this sense should be restricted to British English (the B row n Corpus con­ firms Q uirk et al.9s claim), it is possible to offer some explanation for its tendency to occur in the perfective aspect. This seems to be a reflection o f the primacy o f the resultative ‘possess know l­ edge’ sense over the operative ‘obtain know ledge’ one in the potential m eaning o f know. T he perfective aspect, as Hirtle 1975 has shown, evokes something resultative: it represents the subject o f the verb as being in the result phase o f the event denoted by the past participle. In the case o f the operative sense o f know, this means that in the perfective aspect the subject o f know is conceived as having the results o f directly experiencing some­ thing. This obviously produces an impression w hich is quite similar to the m ore dom inant ‘be aware’ sense — that o f the subject as possessing knowledge - the only difference being that the perfective explicitly evokes this knowledge as the result o f the operation o f obtaining it. This equivalence w ith the dom i­ nant ‘be aware’ sense o f know may explain the tendency for operative-sense know to occur in the perfective.

THE I NFI NITI VE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

53

Know can also be found in the operative sense followed by the to infinitive:

(110)

Vve never known him to lie to me.

(O ’Neill 1934: 39; in Visser 1973: 2313) (111)

W hy, Lily, I never knew you to recite poetry before. (O ’N eil 1934: 34; in Visser 1973: 2313)

In American English, in fact, this is the only usage found. T he distinction betw een operative know followed by the bare or to infinitive could be im puted to dialectal differences if, as Q uirk et al. (1985: 1203) suggest, know + to infinitive was always in Brit­ ish English a ‘factual verb’ expressing the resultative sense, but this is not the case. There are num erous examples o f the opera­ tive sense construed w ith to in British English as well: (112)

I had never known him to pass the garden-gate before. (Dickens 1850: 127; in Jespersen 1940: 283)

(113)

I have known her to be throw n into fainting fits by the King’s taxes. (Dickens 1850: 79; in van Ek 1966: 105)

(114)

H e had known Chinese to eat opium as well as inhale it. (The Times , 8 O ctober 1955; in van Ek 1966: 105)

(115)

‘Poor St Joseph,’ they say, ‘I always get w hat I want from him. I’ve never known him to fa il (Thurston 1909: 4; in Kruisinga 1931: 241)

(116)

I have known him to get up at three o ’clock in the m orning. (Times Weekly Edition , 21/12, 17; in Kruisinga 1931: 241)

(117)

‘H e is acting, C arry’ — ‘N o ,’ said Caroline, ‘he is not. I have never known Evan to lie.’

(M eredith 1861: 183; in Kruisinga 1931: 241) (118)

Vve known them to strike their children in front o f visitors.

(Leech 1987: 37)

54

THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

This means that we must examine the data carefully to see w hether there is any difference in m eaning betw een the uses w ith and w ithout to, and then seek an explanation for the curi­ ous appearance o f to w ith this sense o f know. T he operative sense expressed by know and the reason for the . occurrence o f the bare infinitive having been defined above, our jo b here will be to delimit the use o f the to infinitive construc­ tio n . T he significant feature o f this use is the fact that the infini­ tive always evokes a type o f behaviour w hich is characteristic o f someone or something. This concurs w ith Visser’s observation (1973: 2313) that to occurs after know ‘mainly in questions w ith ever or in statements w ith never or other semi-negatives’, that is, in generalizing contexts referring to som eone’s experience during their entire life-span. All o f our examples are o f this type (cf. above). In contrast, the to infinitive could not be used in the following tw o sentences, where reference is made to nonce hap­ penings: (119)

I never knew anyone do so m uch in so short a time. (Ward 1884: 86; in Visser 1973: 2313)

(120)

I never knew a little adventure happen so quickly as in East Africa. ( The Times, 29 January 1957; in van Ek 1966: 104)

In (119) the bare infinitive do is the equivalent o f ‘w ho did’ and it is only by means o f the indefinite pronoun anyone that the speaker is able to generalize from the particular performance o f the event do w hich was directly experienced. (120) is the begin­ ning o f a newspaper article describing a successful lunch-hour lion-hunting expedition, and so also evokes a (very) singular oc­ currence. In both examples, one could substitute see for know w ith little change in meaning. T he defining features o f the use o f the to infinitive, then, are the evoking o f the infinitive’s event as characteristic behaviour o f the direct object o f know and the incapacity o f evoking the per­ ceiving o f a particular happening. This suggests that w ith to the infinitive’s event is conceived as something w hich is know n and attributed to someone as a result o f experience. In other terms, know ing is not represented as the direct experiencing o f a phe­

THE I NFI NITI VE I N C I D E N T TO FULL VERBS

55

nom enon here, but rather, as w ith the passive o f perceptual verbs, as the condition for attibuting a characteristic to someone. Thus even though know has the operative sense in this use, the operation o f obtaining knowledge is seen m erely as the condi­ tion for predicating the infinitive’s event o f the direct object. This condition/consequence relation betw een know and the in­ finitive is w hat calls for the use o f to. All this helps explain the obligatory use o f the to infinitive after know in the passive: (121)

Mrs M acAnder was known to contribute articles to ‘The Ladies’ Kingdom C om e’. (Galsworthy 1925: 103; in Jespersen 1940: 315)

(122)

Criminals have been known to jest even upon the scaffold. (McCosh 1850: 397; in Visser 1973: 2313)

(123)

Patriotic Englishmen have been known to strike in time of war. (Barker 1947: 30; in Scheurweghs 1959: 241)

(124)

H unt was never known to refuse a proposal o f this sort. (Thackeray 1862: 559; in Visser 1973: 2408)

Again it is not merely the experiencing o f the occurrence o f each o f these events on a num ber o f occasions w hich is ex­ pressed, but rather w hat is know n about the persons referred to by the subjects o f these sentences as the result o f either experi­ ence or receiving information about them from some other source. There is even the possibility that the knowledge evoked here may have been obtained indirectly, through some other channel than direct experience, as a speaker could utter any of the above four sentences w ithout ever having observed what he is asserting at all. (This undoubtedly has to do w ith the resultative nature o f the passive.) It is also to be noted that in all o f the cases above the to infinitive expresses, not a particular happening, but something characteristic o f the person referred to. To summarize, where know means ‘experience directly’, the know ing is frequently represented as accompanying the action experienced, instant by instant, throughout its duration - a coin­

56

THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

cidence in tim e w hich calls for the bare infinitive. Experience can also be evoked as the condition for attributing a charac­ teristic behaviour to someone, however, and this explains the possibility o f using to even w ith the operative sense o f know. (This sense is found only in the present perfect or the past, but never in the non-past.) In the resultative sense o f know, w hich can be found both in the non-past and the past (J know /knew it to be true), know merely evokes a state o f possessing knowledge, and this state is conceived as the condition for representing the infinitive event as a reality. As w ith the verbs o f perception, then, to is used here to evoke an abstract before/after relation o f condition to consequence, and the m ovem ent it signifies as a potential in tongue is actualized w ith a final interception.

2 .7 T H E I N F I N I T I V E A F T E R V E R B S D E N O T IN G C A U S A T IO N M uch has been w ritten on the subject o f causative verbs and causativity, and, m ore particularly, about the semantic and trans­ formational relation betw een lexical causatives (such as the verb kilt) and periphrastic forms (such as cause to die).18 O u r task in this section will be different and m ore specific however: to ac­ count for infinitival usage alone after verbs denoting causation. To set the problem in m ore concrete terms, w e must seek an answer to the question as to w hy make and have are followed by the bare infinitive, while cause, occasion, get and all the other cau­ satives are construed w ith to infinitives. It has been suggested (Dixon 1984: 586) that the omission o f to here ‘may just be an irregularity w ith a diachronic explanation - like the plural o f mouse being mice — that has simply to be learnt by users’. As M ittw och (1990: 125) points out, however, the fret that historically make vacillated for a long tim e betw een to and zero (cf. the biblical H e maketh me to lie down in green pastures) calls for a deeper explanation o f w hy the bare infinitive w on out. She speculates that the reason is purely syntactic, being connected w ith the fact that make (unlike cause) can take a ‘small clause’, as in You make me angry. This, to our m ind, does not explain anything, besides not being distinctive o f verbs followed by bare infinitives (cf. They got him angry / They got him to go to

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57

the party). T he type o f explanation sought here will be based rather on the m eaning o f the causative verb governing the in­ finitive. O ther attempts have been made to deal w ith the types o f complements found after causative verbs from a m ore or less ‘semantic’ point o f view (cf. Dirven 1989, Haim an 1985 and 1983, Givon 1980 and 1975). These studies have led their auth­ ors to speak o f a sort o f ‘binding hierarchy’ (Givon 1980) char­ acterizing the various types o f com plem ent constructions. Thus it is that Givon 1980 talks o f verbs being reduced in finiteness and argues that the degree o f reduction is related to the degree to w hich the event evoked by the com plem ent is bound to the agent or experiencer in terms o f his influence over it. M ake and have are at the top o f the binding hierarchy and take the ‘highly non-verbal’ bare infinitive; order is low er on the scale and takes the to infinitive; next comes insist, w hich is followed by a subor­ dinate clause containing a finite subjunctive form, and then think, construed w ith a subordinate clause in the indicative. W hile such studies as these do bring out the peculiar status o f the causatives make and have (which, I w ould agree, do involve a closer bond betw een the causative event and the event caused), they are nevertheless based on abstract semantic categories w hich have been set up a priori in logico-truth-conditional terms — W ierzbicka (1988: 237) aptly characterizes them as ‘ready-made labels’ - and therefore lose sight o f the fact that each individual language is a system w here meaning is bonded to form in per­ m anent and idiosyncratic fashion (cf. the comments on Ransom 1986 in the Introduction ). Givon typifies this approach in that he scales make, have and cause according to ‘two semantic proper­ ties that are universally attested: (a) intended (controlled) vs un­ intended (uncontrolled) causation . . .; (b) mediated vs direct causation’ (1980: 335). Make is classified as a ‘direct control cau­ sation verb’, have as a ‘m ediated control causation verb’ and cause as a ‘noncontrol causation verb’. As inevitably occurs w hen ab­ stract semantic properties are posited independently o f form and then forms sought w hich express these properties, however, the binding hierarchy explanation, while offering some significant observations, does not square very well w ith the full range of data from actual language use. Indeed, the explanation proposed by Givon actually leads him to distort the data in English to fit

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THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

the ‘universally attested’ semantic properties used as tools o f ana­ lysis. T he distinction made betw een make and cause as intended vs unintended causation, for instance, is based on the claim that one can say: (125)

John accidentally/inadvertendy caused M ary to drop her books.

but not (126)

*John accidentally/inadvertendy made M ary drop her books. (Givon 1975: 66)

Example (126), however, is perfectly normal English, as con­ firmed by the following contexts w here make denotes uninten­ tional causation: (127)

Oops! I’m sorry. I just made you miss your bus.

(128)

O ther w om en - they only made me love you more. (O ’Neill 1947: 130)

(129)

That dress makes you look overweight.

M oreover, as pointed out by M air (1990: 122), cause can be used to express intended causation: (130)

By transferring the D N A from a rough-coated bac­ terium to a sm ooth-coated one, he caused the latter to produce rough-coated offspring, and the character bred true thereafter.

T he classification o f have as evoking causation w hich is inten­ tional but requires the intervention o f a third party (‘mediated control’) is based on the purported questionable acceptability of (131) and (132) as compared w ith the fully ‘acceptable’ (133): (131)

? I caused her to lose her tem per by sending John to taunt her.

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(132)

? I made her lose her tem per by sending Jo h n to taunt her.

(133)

I had her lose her tem per by sending Jo h n to taunt her.

Actual usage, once again, w ould seem how ever to be exactly the opposite: (133) makes no sense whatsoever, while (131) and (132) are fairly normal. Problems such as these show the need for a language-specific approach to English causatives which re­ spects and investigates the way m eaning correlates w ith form in English first o f all. O nly after causatives have been studied from this point o f view both in English and in other languages will we be in a position to attempt valid generalizations across languages.19 W e shall begin our investigation o f how causative verbs inter­ act w ith the infinitive in English by looking at the contrast be­ tw een makeand cause because, although these two verbs seem quite similar in meaning, they are not followed by the same form o f the infinitive: (134)

W hile m ost enzymes cannot make a reaction occur that w ould not take place in their absence, they speed up reactions so that they occur at the tem peratures and other conditions w hich prevail w ithin living organ­ isms. (Isaacs 1963: 100; in van Ek 1966: 118)

(135)

.. . raising the tem perature o f some solid and liquid com pounds causes them to decompose into their elements (or oxidize if they are heated in air) . . . (Isaacs 1963: 47.; in van Ek 1966: 41)

In contem porary English neither *Most enzymes cannot make a reaction to occur nor Raising the temperature o f some solid and liquid compounds causes them decompose into their elements are possible.20 T he obvious question is: If both verbs denote causation, w hy are they not followed by the same version o f the infinitive? If, as is postulated here, usage is determ ined by the m eaning to be ex­ pressed, the answer must be that there are tw o different ways o f conceiving causation in English, make representing it in a way

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that calls for the bare infinitive, cause in a way requiring the representation o f abstract m ovem ent in tim e signified by to. But how exactly can causation be conceived in tw o such different ways? In attempting to discern what distinguishes the notions of making and causing, it soon becomes obvious that there are many objects w hich can be conceived as being made but not as being caused: this is true, for example, o f cars, boats, bread, plas­ tic, in short anything that is brought into being by a process of fabrication. O n the other hand, an accident is caused (by bad road conditions, for example) but not made. O ne can cause con­ cern or consternation (by o n e’s reckless behaviour), but it is in­ conceivable to apply the concept o f making to these notions. Certain objects admit o f both verbs how ever and the contrast in m eaning is highly revealing, as the pair o f examples below from the Brow n University Corpus shows: (136)

. . . such comments as the following w hich was made by one o f the Kohnstamm -negative subjects . . . (B U C J28 1910 11)

(137)

If you have a 6-to-8 inch drain pipe, you may easily wash out all the debris w hen the grate is out. O f course, your 6-inch torrent o f water may cause a lot of comment as it passes through or by neighbouring lots . . . (BUC E19 1500 11)

H ere make denotes the direct involvem ent o f its agent in the production o f the comments: it is the ‘Kohnstamm -negative sub­ jects’ themselves w ho emit comments in (136) above. Cause, in contrast, evokes only indirect involvem ent o f its agent in bring­ ing the comments into being: a ‘6-inch torrent o f w ater’ cannot make a com m ent but the fact o f its passage through som eone’s lot m ight certainly provoke uncharitable remarks from the owner. That w hich causes a com m ent is thus at one remove from the com m ent and is not the sole agent necessary to bring it into being. T he person w ho makes a com m ent, on the other hand, is the one w ho actually utters it. In m ore general terms, make can be characterized as denoting causation as direct or ‘concurrent’ w ith the production o f the effect — a person w ho

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makes a com m ent does the m aking and the com m enting at the same time since the tw o processes can be identified w ith one another: make, in other words, evokes the actual producing o f an effect. Cause, in contrast, denotes causation as indirect or ‘antecedent’, i.e. as doing something w hich provokes the occur­ rence o f an effect. O ther examples confirm this distinction: (138a)

It was then I knew that they were making war against M an, the individual within! (BUC G27 1050 1)

(138b)

Military pow er does not cause war, war is the result o f mistrust . . . (BUC B17 1240 8)

(139a)

. . . and was told ‘the newspapers had made a mistake ’. So I started making some calls o f my own. (BU C C01 0610 5)

(139b)

. . . reflected solar radiation is n ot expected to cause sizable errors in the m easurem ents o f planetary radia­ tion. (BUC J01 1250 7)

In (138a) and (139a) make implies that it is the person(s) referred to by its subject (they, the newspapers) w ho themselves engage in warfare or com m it an error, whereas in (138b) and (139b) cause represents its subject as a condition or circumstance w hich pro­ vokes engagement in warfare or commission o f an error by some other agent. In this respect cause recalls the impression o f an enabling condition associated w ith the verb help w hen used w ith the to infinitive. T he distinction just seen w ith noun objects is also applicable to examples w ith the infinitive and will allow us to account for the distribution o f to w ith cause and make. Thus in (140) below the lighting o f a fire is presented as a condition w hich w ould have perm itted Pops to be found sooner, but the fire could not be conceived as acting on Pops directly itself and ‘making him be found’:

62

(140)

THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

A fire w ouldn’t have m attered except that it w ould cause Pops to be found sooner. H e m ight not be found for days, (BUC L24 1080 6)

O n the other hand, in (141) the ‘she’ is represented as exerting a direct influence on the speaker in order to bring about his car­ rying her upstairs: the suggestion is that the speaker was given no choice, that he was acting under coercion. (141)

She just about made me carry her upstairs and then she clung to m e . . . (BUC K18 0290 6)

In (140), make cannot be substituted for cause — the causation ev o k e d is to o in d ire c t — n o r can cause s u b s titu te fo r make in (141), for the opposite reason. This situation o f mutual exclu­ sion was found to be the case in a certain num ber o f sentences in our corpus. Thus only cause seems appropriate in the uses given below: (142)

. . . m oved the governor’s race forward a few months, causing the campaigning to get started earlier than usual.

(BUC B14 1360 1) (143)

Som ething o f this can be learned from ‘T he W ay to the C hurchyard’ (1901), an anecdote about an old failure whose fit o f anger at a passing cyclist causes him to die o f a stroke or seizure. (BUC G15 0900 12)

(144)

As in the theory o f perception . . . the eye is recog­ nized as an integral part o f the brain. But then this theory confesses that it is completely at a loss as to how the image can possibly be received by the brain. T he opening paragraph o f the chapter titled the Theory of Representative Perception, in the book . . ., says ‘. . . passed on to the brain, and there, by some unexplained process, it causes the brain to have a perception’. (BUC F03 0890 6)

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(145)

(146)

63

I asked if this was because television was causing fewer people to go out to the cinema and she replied no. (LOB G49 182 6) . . . slackness in the Eisenhower Administration had caused America to lag behind Russia in nuclear develop­

m ent. (LOB A01 147 7) In (142)—(144), the impression is one o f a stim ulus-reaction rela­ tion: the subject o f cause evokes the stimulus, the infinitive the reaction. In (145) and (146), the subject o f cause is clearly a condition, and the to infinitive evokes its consequence: the cau­ sal agent is not conceived as actually doing anything in either o f these sentences but merely as having been the condition giving rise to a new state o f affairs. In all o f these cases, therefore, we have ‘antecedent’ causality, the cause being represented as prior to the effect. Contexts in w hich only make is possible fall into tw o types. There are cases like (141), where make evokes a form o f coercion: (147)

- ‘Big Hans made m e come. Big Hans said.’ —‘A fat hell on Big H ans.’ (BUC K24 0520 3)

(148)

If it were not for an old professor w ho made m e read the classics I w ould have been stymied. (BU C N 18 0050 7)

(149)

H o w could he exert authority over them — make them toe the line, as he had to —if he knuckled under . . . (BU C N 09 1330 2)

(150)

. . . the teacher probably w ould make him stand faceto-wall in a corner instead o f stay in after school. (BUC N 27 1560 3)

(151)

‘W hat about Ballestre?’ I had to shake her to make her listen.

(BUC K18 0330 8)

64

(152)

(153)

THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

W hat’s the matter, Joe, you scared o f me? T hink I’m going to make you introduce a drunk as your wife? (BU C P19 1580 2) It’s those two, all right. Harris and Geely. I made them show me their identification . . .

(BUC L05 1000 3) H ere the impression is that the object o f make is given no choice but to perform the action expressed by the infinitive: in (147) the speaker even uses make to decline any personal responsibility for w hat he did — he was ‘acting under coercion’, a paraphrase bringing out the concurrent nature o f the causation involved in these sentences. T he other type o f expressive effect found in contexts where only make is possible can be illustrated by (154)—(156): (154)

. . . beautiful canvases o f m ountains and forms. H e even makes the city look like one o f Thoreau’s handouts. (BUC P10 1260 8)

(155)

. . . and even the Soviet morticians could not make him look presentable. (BUC B20 1110 2)

(156)

. . . m ight try providing standard vacation tim e off but make the vacation pay depend on the num ber o f hours

worked. (BUC E30 1910 11) H ere the object o f make is felt to be completely under the sway o f the subject and so to have no initiative o f its own: the causal agent brings about a change in this object in an immediate fashion w ithout any room for a condition—consequence or stimulus—reaction relationship. O ne can characterize make here as evoking the mere production o f an effect for w hich the ‘m aker’ is entirely responsible. Cause m ight suggest that room is left for the object o f causation to produce its effect as a secondary cause reacting to the stimulus o f the primary one and so w ould not be used in these contexts.

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Even w hen make and cause are mutually substitutable (with the consequent change in the version o f the infinitive), as in (134) and (135), a slight difference in m eaning can be perceived. W hile it is true that cause could be inserted in (134), it is signifi­ cant that the writer has used make w ith a subject (‘enzymes’) w hich actively produces chemical reactions and is even described in the same sentence as an agent that speeds them up. In (135), although make w ould have been possible, the w riter has chosen cause, and has thus felt it to be m ore appropriate to represent the subject o f the verb (‘raising the tem perature o f a com pound’) as an external condition w hich sets off a reaction o f decomposition in compounds rather than as an agent w hich exerts its causative action at the same tim e as the reaction occurs. T he following examples, w here only make is possible, are m ore difficult: (157)

. . . the famous H ow e sewing machine. Curious as to w hat made it work, he built a crude m odel o f it in w ood. (BUC H 26 0660 12)

(158)

I don’t know w hat makes you think you can get away w ith this kind o f business . . . (BU C N 05 0920 6)

In (157) the reference seems to be to an active or w orking prin­ ciple whose action is represented as coinciding in time w ith the functioning o f the sewing machine. (158) evokes the presence o f some idea or attitude in the person’s m ind which, in spite of other pressures, exerts a direct and effectual influence on his thinking. In the light o f this examination o f usage w ith cause and make , it is readily understandable w hy the form er takes the to infinitive while make does not. Make evokes merely the idea o f ‘producing an effect’ (= the event expressed by the infinitive), so that causa­ tion is represented as operating instant by instant throughout the actualization o f the latter and the tw o events are felt to coincide in time. T he situation is quite similar therefore to that w ith the verbs o f perception, w hich explains w hy Kruisinga and Erades (1960: 366) have pointed out that ‘the perception or causing is

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thought o f as happening simultaneously w ith what is perceived or caused’. Cause, on the other hand, situates the causal ||p n t prior to the event caused and so requires the to infinitive. In fact, the two manners o f conceiving causation are quite parallel to the tw o ways o f envisaging assistance expressed by help. These observations account for the distinction o f usage be­ tw een make and cause quite adequately. They do not, however, cover the whole field o f causation. Force, for example, conveys an idea o f coercion similar to that expressed by make in many o f its uses, and yet, like cause, it is followed by the to infinitive: (159)

An injury forced Skorich to quit after the 1949 season. (BUC A14 0230 7)

This fact, w hich seems to run counter to our explanation, calls for a deeper look into the m eaning o f force.

Force and oblige In contrast to make, w hich focusses essentially on the notion o f producing an effect, force explicitly evokes the means used to bring about the realization o f this effect, namely force, and so refers to something prior to the effect’s com ing into being. Evi­ dence that force evokes antecedent causality is found in the con­ trast betw een (160) and (161): (160)

T he average consumer is becom ing m ore sophisticated regarding product and advertising claims, partly because o f widespread criticism o f such assertions. This problem can force a change in m arketing approach in many kinds o f businesses. (BUC E28 0290 7)

(161)

Ford has decided to make a change in m arketing ap­ proach this year.

Like cause in (137), force here implies some agent other than its subject (‘this problem ’) as the actual author o f the change in marketing approach (‘force many businesses to change . . .’). T he

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subject o f make, on the other hand, refers to the persons w ho will actually effect the change, and the making and the changing are felt to coincide in time (‘concurrent causation’). A similar distinction can be observed w ith infinitives. Thus in (162) one gets the impression o f a person laughing against his ow n will, because o f some external coercion. (162)

H e forced me to laugh.

How ever, in (163) the first reading is something like ‘he pro­ voked my laughter’, w ith the clear impression o f a causal agent directly producing the laughter w ithout any independent inter­ vention o f ‘m e’. (163)

H e made m e laugh.

In a second reading, a note o f coercion, or rather moral suasion, can be felt, but even here one gets the impression that ‘h e’ re­ duced any opposition so that the causee was again a mere instru­ m ent acting under coercion. This recalls the habitual rem ark o f youngsters admitting to some misdemeanor perform ed under the influence o f another: He made me do it!, w hich w ould be signifi­ cantly different from H e forced me to do it w hich implies an action one was pushed into by means o f force rather than one per­ form ed under coercion. Force thus denotes antecedent causality, as does cause. Oblige, like force, evokes m ore than merely producing an effect and it too is followed by the to infinitive: (164)

. . . servants, w h o m he had obliged to accompany him. (Walpole 1765: 422; in Visser 1973: 2283)

T he notion o f antecedent causality arises here because an obliga­ tion necessarily exists before it is fulfilled. As a consequence, oblige can be used even w hen the event denoted by the to infini­ tive has not yet been realized: (165)

T he law obliges everyone to pay his taxes. (Webster’s 1961, sub ‘oblige’)

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THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

T he normal interpretation o f (165) does not imply that everyone actually pays his taxes: the sentence simply evokes a state o f obli­ gation in w hich every individual finds him self by virtue o f the law. As w ould be expected, such a use w ould not be possible w ith make , since the law w ould appear to be actually bringing about the paying o f taxes (‘concurrent causation’): (166)

T he law makes everyone pay his taxes,

W ith oblige, on the other hand, the tax law is depicted as simply imposing a state o f obligation in the present, w hich leaves the future actualization o f paying taxes up to each individual, w ho may or may not actually pay them . C otte (1982a: 138) describes the contrast betw een oblige and make in different but complementary terms. C om m enting on (167a) and (167b), he observes that only oblige can be followed by a ‘resultative structure’, whereas make ‘supposes a concom it­ ance betw een causation and the actualization o f the effect being caused, w hich forces the latter to refer to the operation itself rather than to the state w hich results from it’. (167a)

T hat obliged him to have everything finished earlier.

(167b) * T h a t made him have everything finished earlier, C otte thus feels the same impression as that described above: 22 antecedent vs concurrent causation. •

Occasion, get, order, tell and have O f the other verbs denoting causality, get and occasion resemble cause m ore than force and oblige do in that they evoke causality w ithout the idea o f coercion. Occasion is almost a synonym o f cause in many contexts: (168)

She asked M athilda w hat occasioned M anfred to take Theodore for a spectre. (Walpole 1765: 193; in Poutsma 1923: 43)

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Since an occasion is a circumstance favouring the occurrence of an event, one can see how occasion can evoke a mediate cause w hich sets the stage for a subsequent reaction. That is, ‘taking T heodore for a spectre’ is represented as a response to (and so arising after) the stimulus provided by the occasion. This ex­ plains the exclusive use o f the to infinitive after this verb. Get emphasizes the obtaining o f a result: (169)

Q uite apart from the difficulty o f getting subjects to be­ have ‘naturally’ in the course o f a psychological investi­ gation, there is the difficulty o f getting w hat is significant in behaviour to exhibit itself clearly. (Thom son 1961: 23; in van Ek 1966: 76)

To be m ore exact, get itself evokes the efforts required to obtain a certain behaviour from someone or something and the to in­ finitive expresses the result obtained. This can be seen most clearly by contrasting get w ith make in uses such as: (170a)

H e made us laugh.

(170b)

H e got us to laugh.

(171a)

She made me look stupid.

(171b)

She got me to look stupid.

W hereas make focusses on the m ere producing o f an effect, get evokes something w hich precedes the effect — prolonged efforts in (170b), persuasion winning out over unwillingness in (171b) — and so to must be used before the infinitive to represent the latter’s event as a result coming after what led up to it. Order and tell are like get but simply evoke more specific means of obtaining a result. Although close in m eaning to order, tell and get , have is fol­ lowed by the zero infinitive (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 1205) and so requires special attention: (172)

Have a man go through this desk and all papers, and collect every record and scrap o f evidence around.

(Linsky 1947: 83; in Visser 1973: 2269)

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As w ith make, however, a closer examination o f have shows that it contrasts w ith order, tell and in denoting concurrent and not antecedent causality. T he difference betw een have, on the one hand, and order and tell, on the other, can be illustrated quite easily. T he latter do not necessarily imply that the infinitive event actually occurs: (173)

M iriam now ordered Pengally to break dow n the gate, but he said he really couldn’t go that far. (BUC G32 0500 10)

T he sense expressed w ould therefore be diagrammable as: to BEFORE

AFTER

(ordered)

(break down)

This is not the case w ith have, w hich always carries the implica­ tion that this event is actualized: (174)

* M iriam now had Pengally break dow n the gate, but he said he really couldn’t go that far.

Have denotes an exercise o f authority w hich is effectual, that is, w hich ensures the realization o f the action commanded. This does not distinguish have from get, however, as the latter also implies effectual causation:

(175)

* M iriam now got Pengally to break dow n the gate, but he said he really couldn’t go that far,

In a diagram: to

i

BEFORE

AFTER

(Sot)

(break down)

There is a significant distinction in m eaning betw een the tw o nevertheless, and it accounts for the use o f the bare infinitive

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w ith the former. W e have already seen how get denotes the pro­ cess leading to the obtaining o f a result and so is represented as occupying a before-position w ith respect to the infinitive’s event (= the result). Have, in contrast, eliminates any reference to a tension leading up to the realization o f the infinitive and repre­ sents the latter as being ‘already in the bag’, i.e. it carries the presupposition that the person acted upon is subject to the dom inion o f the causal agent. H ere is how one observer de­ scribes this peculiar m eaning o f have: In the have causative the causer assumes the causee’s ‘readiness to serve’; the causee is treated as a cooperative perform er o f the causee’s will, as someone to w hom the causer’s will can be com m unicated (either directly or by an intermediary) and w ho will be neither unable to understand it nor unwilling to perform it. ( . . . ) the causee is expected to comply w ith the causer’s will and there is no assumption or expectation of unwillingness on his or her part. Nonetheless this expected compliance o f the causee is not entirely due to good will: there is an assumption o f dependence . . . (Wierzbicka 1988: 241-2) These comments allow us to understand w hy have could be sub­ stituted for get in (176) but not in (177): (176)

T he teacher got us to write our names on a sheet of paper.

(177)

T he police got him to confess to the crime.

Get evokes the infinitive’s event as a result w hich has been achieved or obtained but does not specify by w hat means. If the means used imply overcom ing the causee’s unwillingness (i.e. realizing a prior condition for the infinitive’s event), then have is inappropriate: this is the case in (177). If how ever the means used is simply the issuing o f a request as in (176), then the causee can either be represented as being brought to perform some action as a result o f the request (get) or as doing something under the influence or authority o f the causer (have). Indeed in all the contexts examined to date have suggests that

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the disposition o f the ‘subordinate’ (denoted by its direct object) to comply can be assumed or taken for granted: a sentence such as I had him cry, for example, w ould sound rather strange, unless imagined in a situation w here someone is disposed to cry on request (as in the context o f a film director w ho is referring to an actor w orking under his orders). This impression o f the ob­ ject o f have being represented as completely submissive to the will o f the person referred to by the subject explains m oreover the use o f the bare infinitive w ith this verb: this exercise o f control by the causer over the causee can be seen as persisting throughout the realization o f the infinitive event. In this use, then, have is similar to make in (163): in both readings, the ob­ ject is seen as a mere instrum ent so that causation is conceived merely as the production o f an effect under the influence o f a cause. 3 Indeed the best characterization o f the m eaning o f have in this use seems to be the idea o f ‘controlling the production o f an effect’. Since make has been shown to evoke the idea o f sim­ ply producing an effect, this explains w hy have always suggests a disposition to comply, whereas make does not. A curious fact w hich m ight seem at first to constitute an ex­ ception to this explanation turns out to provide further confir­ m ation o f it. B oth Poutsma (1923: 42) andjesperson (1940: 287) point out that have is often used w ith the to infinitive in condi­ tional contexts w ith would: (178)

I’d have you to know that I don’t care a penny, madam, for your paltry money. (Thackeray 1858: 338)

(179)

as some authorities would have us to believe. (M cCarthy 1880: 48)

(180)

. . . and seek to express ourselves as we are, and not as w e would have our friend to think us to be. (Benson 1919: 19)

W hat is remarkable here is that have no longer evokes an effectual exercise o f control. It has shifted to the mere expression o f a wish, so that would have is almost synonymous with would like. Given this shift, the appearance o f to before the infinitive is not surprising.

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Usage confirms therefore the existence o f tw o ways o f con­ ceiving causation in English. M ake and have represent it on the one hand merely as the producing o f an effect (controlling the production o f an effect in the case o f have). This leaves no room for the non-realization o f the infinitive event since the action o f producing an effect necessarily coincides in time w ith the ap­ pearance o f the effect (concurrent causation), and so both these verbs call for the bare infinitive. Force, oblige, cause, get and occa­ sion, on the other hand, all evoke a succession betw een cause and effect, the infinitive event being felt to be the result o f the previous action o f the causal agent. This we have called antece­ dent, a way o f seeing causation w hich calls for the use o f the to infinitive to signify the before/after relation betw een the cause and the effect.

Make used with the to infinitive

The infinitive evokes a state Although rare, there are some examples o f make followed by the to infinitive. These require m ore detailed examination in order to determine w hether they disprove the hypothesis formulated above. T he following is typical o f the majority o f these uses: (181)

B ut the circumstance w hich, m ore than any other, has made Ireland to differ from Scotland, remains to be no­ ticed. (T.B. Macaulay 1849: 66; in Poutsma 1926: 430)

H ere, to differ is the equivalent o f to be different, that is to say, the infinitive expresses its event as a state, m ore precisely as a result­ ing state, in this type o f use. This suggests that make expresses antecedent causation, since it evokes a process o f causation giv­ ing rise to a state o f affairs that comes into being only at the end o f the process. To test this interpretation, one m ight suppress the to before the infinitive; differ w ould then evoke, not the resulting state, but the operation leading to the result (i.e. become different), an operation whose locus in time coincides w ith that o f make. The

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expressive effect created by the use o f the to infinitive in this type o f context thus provides further support for our explanatory hypothesis. In most o f the uses o f this type, make is followed by to be, the verb o f state par excellence: (182)

So also history is full o f anomalies and single events giving colouring to periods and making things to be w hat they are. (Stubbs 1906: 1; in Kruisinga 1931: 240)

(183)

But she admired even m ore w hat came later; how after she had ceased wanting to blot him entirely from her m ind, to make him not to be, they had found that they could after all talk good sense and kindness to each other. (M urdoch 1963: 14; in van Ek 1966: 119)

(184)

She w ould swallow it all up, she w ould assimilate the evil news and make it not to be . . . (M urdoch 1963: 209; in van Ek 1966: 119)

To be evokes a resulting state in these sentences as does to differ in (181) and make evokes an antecedent cause. This is seen in (182) in that anomalies and single events are depicted as one o f the factors w hich explain w hy things are w hat they are, that is, as underlying conditions giving rise to a certain state o f affairs (and therefore corresponding to a notional ‘before’ position). In (183) and (184), similarly, it is clear that the effort to mentally blot something out o f existence can only take place while it is still in existence, that is, before the state o f non-existence into w hich one is trying to project it. A very different expressive effect is evoked by the bare infini­ tive be in the four examples o f it found so far:

(185)

I could feel him fighting w ith himself . . . during all those afternoons . . . our w onderful afternoons o f happiness! . . . and I said nothing . . . I made myself be calculating . . . (O ’Neill 1919: 91)

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(186)

H e (sc. Mussolini) cannot make his followers be orderly. (Manchester Guardian, no further reference given; in Poutsma 1929: 810)

(187)

I made him be quiet. (Curme 1931: 124)

(188)

You will make the foes o f England be sorry you were born. (Housman 1896: 33 in O E D , sub make)

In the first three sentences, be obviously has its ‘activity’ sense and one gets the impression o f continuous efforts o f the subject in order to make himself behave in a calculating manner, to make his followers act in an orderly way or to keep someone quiet. (188) can be compared w ith (154)—(156) above: make evokes the production o f an effect for w hich the ‘m aker’ is wholly responsible, there being no other factor but the beha­ viour o f the agent ‘y o u ’ involved in bringing about this effect (contrast (182) in this respect, w here room is left for other fac­ tors to intervene).

The infinitive evokes an action A survey o f usage also brings to light a few cases o f a rare use — the to infinitive denoting an action after make. O ne such example is: (189)

. . . the cry w hich made me suddenly to re-enter the dimension o f distinctness. (Cummings 1928: 115; in K irchner 1952: 458)

H ere the bare infinitive would, o f course, have been the ‘nor­ m al’ form. To brings in a distinctive nuance however: it rein­ forces the idea expressed by suddenly. T he to infinitive forces the m ind to jum p from the cause (cry) to the fully fledged existence o f the effect (the instantaneous re-entry into the dimension o f distinctness). It is as if the speaker, in a state o f semi-conscious­ ness, was first aware o f the stimulus, and then, an instant later, suddenly awoke to find himself confronted w ith the result pro­

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voked by this stimulus, w ithout being conscious o f the passage from one state to the other. T he bare infinitive w ould blunt the sharp edge o f this expressive effect. In the following sentence, the effect introduced by the use o f the to infinitive is even m ore striking: (190)

. . . w hat he saw there made him falter and repeat himself and then suddenly to explode into a cry. (Hughes 1961: 22; in Visser 1973: 2262)

T he author o f this passage has skilfully exploited the contrast betw een the bare and the to infinitives. T he bare infinitives are used to refer to reactions concurrent w ith the contem plation o f the scene w hich the person in question has before his eyes, spontaneous reactions, leaving no room for reflection. T he to infinitive after and then , on the other hand, creates the impress­ ion o f a delayed reaction; it suggests that it took a m om ent’s reflection for the person to realize the im port o f w hat he had seen, this realization being w hat triggered his sudden cry. T he above contexts w here make is followed by the to infini­ tive, far from disproving the explanation given above o f w hy this verb is generally construed w ith the bare infinitive, confirm it therefore most convincingly. In all the cases analysed, make has shifted to evoke an antecedent cause, and the to infinitive almost always evokes a state as arising at the end o f a process o f causa­ tion (or o f com ing-to-be). In the few cases just seen w here the to infinitive denotes an action, it also brings in the nuance o f subsequence, o f sudden m ovem ent from one instant to the next.

The infinitive after make in the passive

Like verbs o f perception, make takes the to infinitive in the passive (cf Q uirk et al. 1985: 1206): (191)

As the novels and tales lead out o f the nineteenth cen­ tury and into our ow n, w e are made to feel m ore o f the limited, contingent validity o f moral claims and o f col­ laborative endeavour. (Ford 1961: 121; in van Ek 1966: 121)

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W here verbs o f perception and know, as w e saw above, evoke a characteristic expressive effect in this context, it is m ore diffi­ cult to see any nuance characterizing make here, other than per­ haps a suggestion o f result. Thus in (191), to feel evokes a new state o f awareness w hich has arisen as a result o f the com bined effect on the reader’s m ind o f novels and tales previously se­ lected for this purpose. Som ething similar m ight be said o f the following: (192)

Thus by reducing the tem perature o f m atter in the gas­ eous state it can be made to pass through all three physi­ cal states. (Isaacs 1963: 46; in van Ek 1966:121)

(193)

In B onn, the few hours o f talk and the banquets w ith West German leaders were made to produce, by all ac­ counts, the inform ation he needed. (The Observer, 30 June 1963: 9; in van Ek 1966: 121)

(194)

H e was very soon made to understand that he was not wanted in that corner o f it where old Lingard and his ow n weak will placed him . . . (J. Conrad 1921: 28)

In each o f these examples, however, the nuance is too fugitive to provide uncontroversial basis for discussion. As pointed out above regarding the verbs o f perception, nevertheless, the passive is by its very nature resultative. It seems logical therefore that to evoke ‘m aking’ (i.e. producing an effect) from the point o f view o f the patient acted upon rather than from that o f the agent acting is to evoke the effect produced on the patient rather than the producing o f the effect on the latter by the agent. Since the infinitive evokes the effect, to represent it as a m ere result produced on the patient implies representing it as coming after the operation o f producing this effect (= the making), w hence the use o f to to express the before/after rela­ tionship betw een the tw o events. This hypothesis requires fur­ ther analysis o f the passive voice before it can be considered confirmed however. C om m on though the to infinitive is after make in the passive,

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it is, apparently, not ubiquitous. At least one grammarian is o f the opinion that the bare infinitive can also be used in this type o f context: T he active voice is always followed by the infinitive w ithout to. This is also occasionally found after the passive voice, but the usual construction after a passive is one in w hich to is used. H e was made to feel ashamed. H e was made to sign the statement. T hough H e was made sign the statement m ight pass, it w ould scarcely be idiomatic to say H e was made give them the money. It is difficult to lay dow n any rule in the m atter . . . (W ood 1964: 174) This usage may be dialectal, as suggested by Kirchner (1952: 456), w ho gives the following examples from the twentieth century: (195)

It wasn’t pleasant to he made feel like a good-for-nothing little brat. (Shaw 1901: 139)

(196)

I’ll not have him made suffer. (St J. Ervine, no reference given)

(197)

I was glad to be made go. (Con O ’Leary, no reference given)

H e comments that ‘this now obsolete construction (NED 1600 sub 53) is preserved in Irish’. T he only other tw entieth-century example I have found is also from an Irish-born writer: (198)

I’ve been made scream w ith pain in other ways. (Shaw 1904: 282; in Visser 1973: 2410)

Before dismissing this usage as dialectal, however, it was thought wise to examine the contexts where it occurs in order to see if there is any discernible justification for it. (198) above, for example, is uttered by a young lady w ho is recounting to her horrified m other the experience she has just had o f being

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throw n into prison and badly treated after being arrested in a bar brawl. H ere is the immediate context: ‘You see, it’s all real to me. I’ve suffered it. I’ve been shoved and bullied. I’ve had my arms twisted. Vve been made scream w ith pain in other ways. I’ve been flung into a filthy cell w ith a lot o f other poor wretches as if I were sack o f coals being emptied into a cellar.’ (Shaw 1904: 282) Sentence (195) is pronounced by Cashel Byron as he recounts what used to happen w hen he w ent hom e from boarding school for the holidays: ‘As to the holidays, they were the worst part o f the year to me. W hen I was left at school I was savage at not being let go hom e; and w hen I w ent hom e, my m other did nothing but find fault w ith m y schoolboy manners. I was getting too big to be cuddled as her darling boy, you understand. H er treatm ent o f m e was just the old game w ith the affectionate part left out. It wasn’t pleasant, after being cock o f the school, to be made feel like a good-for-nothing little brat tied to her apron strings.’ (Shaw 1901: 139) T he contexts o f the other two examples is not recoverable since Kirchner does not give complete references. In both cases where the context is available however, the bare infinitive is used in reference to the undergoing o f unpleasant treatm ent, w here the speaker clearly wishes to stress the realization o f a distasteful ex­ perience w hich was forced upon him. Substitution o f the to in­ finitive gives a somewhat different impression: the events seem to be evoked in a m uch m ore resultative fashion — as the fact of having been made to scream, the state o f B yron’s feelings - that is, as an object o f reflection rather than a recall o f actual experi­ ence. W hile nothing definitive can be concluded from such meagre data, the fact that such examples do seem to suggest different impressions than the to infinitive to speakers o f various dialects indicates that they deserve closer attention, especially in the light o f a further examination o f the passive voice.

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2 .8

T H E I N F I N I T I V E A F T E R T H A N K A N D B ID

T he last tw o verbs to be looked at in the field o f causality are thank and bid. They present an interesting problem o f usage be­ cause both can be construed w ith either infinitive. In most o f its occurrences, thank is used w ith the to infinitive: (199)

I’ll thank you to pass the decanter. (Fox 1882: 170 in Jespersen 1940: 290)

As Jespersen points out, thank expresses the idea o f asking politely here and the infinitive can be paraphrased by ‘if you w ill . . .’. M air (1990: 155) adds a further observation: T he most pointed example o f the tem poral reorientation forced by the presence o f an infinitival com plem ent clause is provided by the verb thank , w hich turns into its ow n anto­ nym w hen followed by an infinitive, changing its m eaning from ‘express gratitude for a benefit received’ to ‘ask’ — as in T il thank you to be quiet.

T he prospective m eaning o f to is thus perfectly clear in this use. But thank can also be followed by the bare infinitive, as in the following examples, w hich Jespersen (1940: 289) qualifies as ‘rather vulgar’: (200)

I’ll thank ye hand m e the salt. (Thackeray 1850: 138)

(201)

And I’ll thank ye give m e a glass o f punch too, John. (Thackeray 1850: 369)

T he fact that the use o f the bare infinitive should give rise to an impression o f impoliteness or vulgarity is at first sight a bit sur­ prising, but w hen considered in the light o f make and have, examined above, the reason becomes clearer. T he suppression o f to has the effect o f leaving no distance betw een the request and the action requested so that the actualization o f the request is represented as carrying w ith it the realization o f what is asked. This is like taking for granted the will o f the person to w hom

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the request is made and leaving no room for him to say no — treating him as an instrum ent — whence the tone o f excessive familiarity. W ith the verb bid the bare infinitive is, according to Visser (1973: 2272, 2303), m uch the m ore com m on, both in the sense o f ‘com m and’ (‘w hich tends to becom e obsolete’) and in the sense o f ‘invite’. T he impression calling for the use o f the bare form o f the infinitive here is very similar to that encountered w ith the verb have: the compliance o f the person receiving the com m and or invitation can be taken for granted completely. This impression o f the infinitive event’s already being in the bag calls for a representation in w hich there is no separation betw een the event denoted by the infinitive and that denoted by bid, no way to conceive the bidding as existing w ithout the infinitive’s event also being actualized. In the sense o f ‘com m and’ the presum ption o f compliance seems to be due to the fact that the bidder has the authority necessary to ensure that the action requested will be carried out. H ere are some examples: (202)

H e gives m e a stroke on the head w ith his cane; bids me carry that to my master. (Sheridan 1785: 1; in Poutsma 1923: 46)

(203)

Bid R odolph o f Saxony approach! (Lytton 1842: 192; in Poutsma 1923: 46)

(204)

It was Traddles, w hom M r M ell instantly discomfitted by bidding him hold his tongue. (Dickens 1850: 48; in Poutsma 1923: 46)

(205)

I leapt out o f the carriage bidding the m an wait. (Hope 1898: 96; in Jespersen 1940: 288)

In the sense o f ‘invite’, bid + bare infinitive is used to express requests w ith w hich it is normal to comply: (206)

H e bade his companions enter. (Ward 1888: 191; in Visser 1973: 2273)

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(207)

M organ . . . squeezed my hand, bidding me . . . rec­ ommend myself to . . . (Smollett 1748: 210; in Visser 1973: 2273)

(208)

W hat had he thought of, to go to John, grovel and beg understanding? To confess w ith a canvas chair as a prieD ieu , gouging at his heart until a rough and stupid hand bade him rise and go? (BUC K21 1610 14)

O r it can be used to express requests for which one can assume willingness to comply: (209)

(She) took m e by the hand, and bidding m e be o f good cheer, set off w ith Gus in a coach, to pay a visit to those persons. (Thackeray 1903: 162; in Poutsma 1923: 46)

(210)

But a handsome butcher, w ho had found a place beside her, held that she was entitled to the post o f honour in the front row, and bade her not be frightened. (Shaw 1901: 116)

W ith the to infinitive after bid, m ore room is left to the initiative o f the person receiving the request. This can be seen in: (211)

Have I not bidden you never to look upon the face o f woman? (Kingsley 1857a: 3; in Poutsma 1923: 47)

Here bid approaches the sense o f ‘com m and’, but the effect is not that o f ushering the infinitive event into existence as w ith the bare infinitive: since (211) expresses a com m and valid for all time henceforth (cf. never), there is no way o f guaranteeing com ­ pliance. This explains w hy the bare infinitive w ould not be possible in this context. T he contrast betw een the bare and to infinitive constructions w ith bid can therefore be stated in terms o f w hether compliance is taken for granted or not. W hen it can, no room is left for the non-realization o f the infinitive event, and so the concurrent

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representation evoked by the bare infinitive is appropriate. W hen compliance is not taken for granted, to is used in order to ‘futurize’ the infinitive event’s actualization, i.e. to evoke it as something w hich the person receiving the request may or may not decide to do. As w ith make, the passive o f bid generally takes to (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 1206), this being due to the m ore resultative view implied by this construction. T he overall picture o f usage w ith bid tends therefore to confirm the general view of the infinitive proposed here.

2 .9

TH E INFIN ITIV E A FTER L E T AND A L L O W

B oth o f these verbs evoke the general notion o f permission, but whereas let takes only the bare infinitive, allow must be followed by to. T he only examples found o f let + to infinitive are ar­ chaic.24 This suggests a situation similar to that o f make and cause, involving tw o different ways o f conceiving permission in Eng­ lish. It is not hard to see how permission can be conceived as something w hich throws the action perm itted into the future: one generally gets permission first and then performs the action perm itted after. This, it will be argued, corresponds in fact to the way allow (and also permit) represent permission, a way o f view­ ing this notion w hich calls for the use o f to before the infinitive. Indeed allow can even represent the existence o f permission w ithout saying w hether the perm itted action is carried out or not: (212)

A measure passed by Congress just before adjourning softened the ruling’s impacts, on prior-year returns still under review, for clay-mining companies that make brick and tile products. T he measure allows such com ­ panies in those years to apply their mineral depletion allowances to 50% o f the value o f the finished products rather than to the low er value o f raw clay alone. (BUC A28 1000 8)

H ere the companies are now in a position to apply their mineral depletion allowance to 50 per cent o f the value o f their finished products - and they w ould be foolish not to take advantage of

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this measure — but the sentence itself does not say that they actually do so. Similar examples can be found w ith the verb permit:

(213)

T he second agreement permits the authority to sell a 520-acre tract west o f Stage 1. (BUC A09 1260 2)

Permission is here conceived as existing already, even though that w hich is perm itted m ight be carried out ten years from now, or never. Antecedent permission seems therefore perfectly normal. T he problem is to understand how permission can be represented by let as concurrent w ith the event perm itted, as suggested by our hypothesis on the bare infinitive. Observations from the only tw o grammarians to com m ent on this aspect o f the m eaning o f let (Cotte 1982b and M ittw och 1990) put us on the trail o f the explanation. C otte (pp. 71—2) distinguishes tw o m ain senses o f let, the first o f w hich is described as ‘the non-intervention o f an agent in an action w hich has been initiated independendy o f h im /h er and has been going on already for a certain tim e’, and can be illus­ trated by: (214)

H e w ouldn’t even dance w ith her at Gavin’s party. He treats her like she was dirt. And you stand by and let him do it . . . (BUC N 02 1170 10)

Since let signifies here not intervening in some event w hich is already under way, it is obvious that the letting must be thought o f as coinciding in tim e w ith the actualization o f the other event. This w ould justify the fact that to is not used w ith this sense o f let. T he second sense m entioned by C otte is ‘permission given’, and can be illustrated by a sentence such as: (215)

T he doctor let m e donate blood for m y father even though I had a mild case o f the flu.

Even in this sense, C otte makes a case for analysing let as evok-

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ing permission from the point o f view o f non-intervention, ‘per­ m itting’ being represented here in a purely negative fashion, as not intervening to stop the realization o f an action w hich the perm ittee wishes to perform. H e proposes the following contexts to illustrate the contrast betw een the way let represents per­ mission and the m anner in w hich allow evokes it: (216a)

I allowed him to do it, but he didn’t do it.

(216b) ? I let him do it, but he didn’t do it. (217a)

I don’t/d id n ’t allow him to do it, but he does/did it.

(217b) * I don’t/d id n ’t let him do it, but he does/did it. H e concludes: L’actualisation du deuxiem e proces va de pair avec celle de let, mais pas avec celle de allow, qui semble surtout incident a him, l’actant qui a en dernier ressort la responsabilite d ’actualiser ou non le proces. Accorder la permission avec let, c’est se placer directem ent dans l’actuel: la permission est necessairement suivie d’effet. Let place dans l’actuel, ou laisse, en supprim ant tout obstacle sur l’actualisation . . . As C otte points out, allow and let evoke permission in different ways: the latter seems incapable o f evoking the giving o f per­ mission w ithout evoking at the same tim e the realization o f the action perm itted (cf. (216b)), whereas allow is not subject to this restriction. Indeed it has been seen in (212) above that allow can even evoke the existence o f permission as a present state and leave the realization o f the action perm itted in the hypothetical future. Although C otte does not allude to this use, it provides confirmation o f his analysis, particularly since let w ould not be appropriate at all in such contexts: in (212), for example, it w ould suggest that the event apply is actually realized, whereas the im port o f the sentence is simply to describe the provisions included in the new law. M ittw och (1990: 117) feels very similar impressions to those described by Cotte: like him, she points out that a sentence such

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as (218a) seems contradictory whereas (218b) does not: (218a)

She let him stay at hom e yesterday but he chose to go to school all the same.

(218b)

She allowed him to stay at hom e yesterday but he chose to go to school all the same.

H er conclusion is that, unlike allow, let is not a performative and ‘does not even, strictly speaking, convey a report o f an illocutionary act’. W e are proposing, along w ith Cotte, that let evokes m uch m ore than m erely the speech act o f giving permission: it signifies giving an event access to existence, perm itting some­ thing by not intervening to obstruct its being accomplished. This way o f conceiving permission obviously makes the perm itting inseparable from the realization o f the action perm itted, w hich is not the case w ith the verbs allow and permit. In a third use dealt w ith by neither C otte nor M ittw och, let provides a further test for the hypothesis proposed here: (219)

Let AB be equal to CD .

T he coincidence betw een let and the infinitive is slightly ob­ scured here by the use o f let as an imperative. Nevertheless, (219) is the equivalent o f ‘Postulate AB = C D ’, w hich is to say that let is an instruction to anyone reading this sentence to con­ ceive AB as equal to CD . Since mathematics deals w ith purely imaginary entities, there is theoretically nothing preventing AB from being equal to C D except the need for someone to con­ ceive them as equal, so that the actualization o f let carries w ith it the automatic actualization o f be equal. Thus, as above, letting can be analysed as inseparable from the realization o f the event evoked by the infinitive. This use is closely related to another, w hich is often charac­ terized as a first- or third-person imperative (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 829): (220)

And G od said: 'Let there be fight.’ A nd there was fight. (Genesis I, 3)

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(221)

87

Let the celebrations begin!

T he impression one gets here is that o f a realization almost simultaneous w ith the utterance o f the sentence — (220) evokes the creation o f light, (221) the beginning o f the celebrations. T he use o f let as an imperative implies that the speaker feels that the mere impinging o f his will upon that o f the other people involved in the situation will be enough to get the infinitive action accomplished. A further detail w hich supports the view that let evokes the lifting o f all obstacles to the event denoted by the infinitive and concom itant actualization o f the latter is the tendency for let to form a tight unit w ith the infinitives o f certain verbs: (222)

Kreisler let fall a further heavy hint. (Lewis 1918: 100; in Visser 1973: 2294)

(223)

T he living-room occupies all the stage on the ground floor. It is well furnished, and almost aggressively ex­ presses Mrs H arrington’s personality. W e are let know by it that she is a person o f Taste . . . (Shaffer 1962: 171; in van Ek 1966: 115)

T he group form ed by let and the following infinitive is so close in these uses that it is the equivalent o f a single verb: let fall corresponds to drop, let know to inform, etc. Even the w ord order indicates a tight bond: let + infinitive occupies the syntactic posi­ tion o f the lexical verb, w ith the direct object being placed after, and not before, the infinitive. In these uses, one gets the im ­ pression that let has been dematerialized to the point o f almost being a mere ‘actualized o f the infinitive event (cf. C otte 1982a: 139): the concurrence implied by let has been pushed here to the point w here let simply indicates that the infinitive’s event was realized.26 There is thus ample evidence to support the view that let evokes permission (assumption, comm and, etc.) as not obstruct­ ing the realization o f the action perm itted.27 O ne can even ana­ lyse the contracted form let's (as in Let's have a party) from this point o f view. U nlike the usual ‘permission’ sense (cf. Please, let us have a party), let here is addressed to the other members o f the

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group to w hich the speaker belongs. Its sense may be seen as an abstract representation o f permission (‘give your assent to a party’) or even o f not preventing (‘don’t be indifferent to ’). In any case, as an imperative, let suggests that the speaker feels that the impinging o f his will on the others’s should be enough to obtain their assent or overcom e their indifference and thereby get the infinitive action under way. This makes let very different from allow and permit , w hich do not necessarily imply that the infinitive event is realized: in (212) and (213) above, they even evoke a state o f permission as existing before any realization o f the act for w hich permission has been given, something w hich is absolutely impossible w ith let. T he distinction betw een these tw o ways o f conceiving permission accounts for the use o f either the bare or the to infinitive here. Let represents permission as non­ intervention, i.e. as not obstructing the accomplishment o f the event expressed by the infinitive, and so the letting cannot be conceived as coming before the event perm itted (indeed one cannot say that one has let someone do something until they have actually done it). Since the letting cannot be conceived as existing before the event perm itted gets under way, to is not used w ith let, just as it is not used w ith see because seeing cannot be conceived as taking place before the first m om ent o f the event seen. Allow and permit, in contrast, represent permission as a prior condition — often in the form o f the illocutionary act o f giving permission - making the infinitive event’s accomplish­ m ent licit. This situates the allowing or perm itting before and the event perm itted in the subsequence, thus calling for the use o f to. T he to following allow and permit can be conceived w ith either an initial interception, as in (212) and (213), or a final one, as in They stood by and allowed him to steal my car.

2.10

CO N C LU SIO N

This brings to a close the examination o f contexts in w hich the to and bare infinitives can be directly opposed in use w ith full verbs. T he attention focussed on the to infinitive has led to some im portant generalizations. It has been seen that the to preceding the infinitive is the sign that the event expressed by means o f the infinitive is represented as posteriorized in tim e w ith respect to

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some point o f reference. To signifies this relation o f subsequence in virtue o f its potential m eaning o f a m ovem ent from one point in time to another and has been seen to give rise to two clearly identifiable actual meanings according to w hether the speaker conceives the whole m ovem ent w hich to is capable o f signifying or only the initial part thereof. T he w hole m ovem ent is con­ ceived in cases such as She got me to break down the door, w hich have been diagrammed as: break

to

In this sense, the infinitive can be said to evoke a subsequent actualization , i.e. an event w hich is actualized as a consequence o f a previous event bringing it into being. This m eaning contrasts w ith that found in sentences such as She ordered me to break down the door, where only part o f the m ovem ent signified by to is actualized: to

break

H ere the infinitive can be described as evoking a subsequent potentiality , i.e. an event whose actualization is futurized w ith respect to that o f the main verb. As for the bare infinitive, a significant generalization concern­ ing its m eaning has been arrived at - the notion o f coincidence in time betw een the infinitive and the verb to w hich it is inci­ dent, w ith the latter being inconceivable as a before-position w ith respect to the infinitive’s event. In all the cases examined w ith full verbs, the bare infinitive has evoked w hat could be term ed a coincident actualization, and its event is not represented as beginning to exist in time before that o f the main verb, as de­ picted by this diagram o f I watched him cross the street:

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cross

watched

PAST

NON-PAST

This does not exhaust the expressive capacity o f the bare infini­ tive, however, as w e are going to see that it can also express w hat we will call coincident potentiality. This sense is only found w ith auxiliaries, w hich have not been discussed yet since no op­ positions betw een the tw o versions o f the infinitive are possible in most cases w ith these verbs. Since to is not found w ith most auxiliaries, they provide a further test for the hypothesis that the bare infinitive implies the absence o f a before- position w ith respect to the event it expresses, w hich will be the topic o f the next chapter.

Three

The infinitive incident to auxiliary verbs

3 .1

AUXILIARY D O

T he notion o f absence o f a before/after relation betw een the bare infinitive and the verb to w hich it is incident can be ap­ plied quite readily to its use w ith auxiliary do, if one takes into account the peculiar nature o f auxiliaries. T he latter, as Guil­ laume (1964: 73-86) has shown, are verbs whose lexical content is incom plete and requires a lexical supplement from another verb form in order to be usable in discourse. An auxiliary, there­ fore, does not evoke a separate event from that expressed by the verb form it accompanies, but merely denotes the way the lat­ ter’s event is conceived, the point o f view from w hich the speaker regards it. In its use as an auxiliary, do has retained from the idea of ‘perform ing an activity’ signified in its use as a lexical verb only the notion o f ‘something actually taking its place in tim e’: do auxiliary thus has the effect o f discussing the real actualization in time o f the lexical event denoted by the infinitive. If do is used in the past tense, therefore, the infinitive’s event is explicitly af­ firmed to have taken place in time in the past; compare: (la)

I ate my porridge.

(lb)

I did eat my porridge.

In a sentence such as (lb) not only does did situate its lexical

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supplement (eat) in time like any other auxiliary, but it also evokes all the time necessary to actualize the infinitive’s lexeme and so produces a representation o f an event seen from begin­ ning to end as something that really takes its place in time. If do is used in the non-past, the infinitive’s event is situated in the first m om ent o f the non-past time-sphere: (2)

She does own a Porsche.

H ere the resulting effect is to emphatically assert a present state. Thus do evokes the taking place in time — in the stretch o f time in the past or non-past required to realize it — o f the event denoted by the infinitive. In affirmative verb phrases therefore the event is explicitly situated in the stretch o f time evoked by do, w hence the expressive effect o f emphasizing something really taking place. In negative and interrogative contexts, on the other hand, the event’s taking place in tim e is denied or questioned. Schematically for (lb):

NON-PAST

PAST

And for (2): own

does

PAST

NON-PAST

T he point o f all this is to explain w hy do takes the bare infini­ tive. Since do evokes the very taking place in time o f the infini-

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five’s event, it is obvious that it cannot be conceived as arising prior to the latter, i.e. as constituting a before-position w ith re­ spect to this event.

3 .2 T H E M O D A L A U X I L I A R I E S T he only explanation proposed to date for the absence o f to after the modal auxiliaries (M ittw och 1990: 127-9) is, by the author’s ow n admission, ‘entirely syntactic’: to is analysed as a modal it­ self, and since the grammar ‘must include a constraint against tw o modals in sequence in order to rule out examples such as I f John agreed to baby-sit, we would can g o \ it follows that to and the modals cannot co-occur. Besides the fact that M ittw och scuttles her ow n argum ent by citing examples such as N o newspaper would dare publish his denial where ‘dare shows modal charac­ teristics precisely in governing the bare infinitive . . ., yet it is governed by another m odal’ (p. 128), and the fact that treating to as a modal auxiliary is in itself highly implausible,28 this ana­ lysis simply begs the question of w hether there is a semantic motivation behind the absence o f to here. In order to address this question one must first endeavour to investigate the type of m eaning expressed by to and the type o f m eaning expressed by the modals and then try to see w hy they cannot be put into relation w ith one another. It will be shown below that w hen one does this a semantic explanation for the use o f the bare infinitive after the modal auxiliaries is possible and that this use is perfectly consistent w ith all the other uses o f the bare form in English. This explanation is far less obvious than in the case o f do auxiliary however, since in sentences such as (3), the infinitive seems to evoke an action w hich is future w ith respect to the existence o f the obligation w hich must evokes in the present. (3)

You must leave tom orrow ,

Clearly, in our experience, the leaving must occur after the obli­ gation w hich exists at the m om ent o f speaking. Hirtle (1975: 124) makes this successivity explicit w hen he diagrams his ana­ lysis o f modal will in A t one o'clock they will eat lunch:

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THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

one o ’clock eat

•4----------—

will ACTUAL TIME

POST-ACTUAL TIME (=FUTURE)

PAST

NON-PAST

T he role o f will is described as that o f ‘keeping the infinitive beyond the stretch o f time containing the present o f actual con­ sciousness’ and so situating its event in the future. Similar im ­ pressions seem to arise from sentences such as I may leave tomorrow and I can finish it next week. T he impression just described is not characteristic o f all uses of the modals however: there are some w here the infinitive’s event seems to coincide w ith that o f the auxiliary, but in a very differ­ ent way from do. This can be illustrated by the following senten­ ces: (4)

H e must like spaghetti a lot. H e eats so m uch o f it.

(5)

D o n ’t call him now. H e ’ZZ be having supper.

(6)

She may own a Porsche. I don’t know.

In these cases, the event o f the infinitive is presented as some­ thing whose existence, in the present m om ent evoked by the modal, seems necessary (must), quite probable (will), or merely possible (may). Such uses provide an interesting point o f comparison w ith auxiliary do w hich offers a first glimpse o f the explanation for the use o f the bare infinitive here. W hereas do situates the infinitive in a stretch o f time in the past or non-past as something really existing or taking place in that tim e-stretch, the modals in (4)— (6) on the other hand situate the infinitive’s event merely as something w hich has certain chances o f existing in the stretch o f time w hich they express. In (6), for example, all that is affirmed is possible ownership in the present, while in (2) the m eaning

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expressed is that ownership is real. This suggests that the modals differ from do auxiliary in involving a representation o f the in­ finitive event, not as something whose real existence coincides w ith the present or past tim e-stretch expressed by the auxiliary, but as something w hich coincides w ith the modal only inasmuch as its existence as a potential is concerned. W here do evokes the infinitive as a reality, the modals evoke it as a potentiality. T he infinitive’s meaning-capacity in its ‘bare’ use is therefore no different from that observed w hen it is preceded by to. In the latter case it can express either a subsequent actualization (I man­ aged to catch up with her) or a subsequent potentiality (I wanted to catch up with her). W ithout to, it can evoke either a coincident actualization (She does own a Porsche) or a coincident potentiality (She may own a Porsche). Further confirmation o f the bare infini­ tive’s ability to express a coincident potentiality isprovided by uses in exclamations where it does not occur in relation w ith a modal: (7)

What! M e own a Porsche!

H ere the infinitive’s event is treated as a possibility that has no chance o f being real — as something w hich is impossible, absurd — w hich shows that the infinitive is clearly capable o f expressing a potentiality all by itself. It must be pointed out m oreover that representing the infini­ tive’s event as a m ere potentiality leaves the question o f the lo­ cation in time o f its actualization wide open. A sentence such as (8) below could refer to the past (H ow could you have expected m e to know the answers to those questions w hich you asked me last week?), the present (Why are you asking me? I never study), or the future (I w ould be really surprised if I knew the answers on the exam next week): (8)

What! M e know the answers!

This allows one to understand w hy in sentences w ith the m o­ dals, such as (3) above, the infinitive event’s actualization can be future w ith respect to the place in time o f the modal. W hat is coincident w ith the m odal’s event is the infinitive event’s poten­ tiality, not its actualization.

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It may seem surprising nonetheless to claim that the infinitive event is represented as a m ere potentiality in uses w ith the modal auxiliaries in past contexts such as: (9)

W hen he was young, he could swim across the lake and back in 10 minutes.

(10)

H e would concoct anecdotes and then h e’d tell them to me over and over again, you know, obviously not real­ izing that h e’d told them to me before. (Survey o f English Usage 2.7.81; in Coates 1983: 209)

There is, however, good evidence for this as well. W hile (9) does imply that he actually swam across the lake on several occasions, all that it in fact expresses is the past exist­ ence o f the ability to swim, so that swimm ing is thought o f as a potential event and not as an actualization. O ne can indeed use could in a positive sentence evoking a past capacity w hich was never even exercised: (11)

Ten years ago, the super-powers could already destroy the w orld 1000 times over.

This shows that the actualization o f the infinitive’s event is not w hat such sentences express, an analysis supported by Coates (1983: 100), w ho gives a similar argum ent for the m eaning o f can in her discussion o f She can swim , and Palmer (1977: 5), w ho has pointed out that a sentence such as (12) is impossible because can ‘is not used to imply actuality in the past’: (12)

* I ran fast and could catch the bus,

Example (13) how ever is quite acceptable because it implies that the event did not take place, being seen merely as a possibility in the past (i.e. a potentiality). (13)

I ran fast, but couldn't catch the bus.

As for (10), would has been analysed as evoking the infinitive event as ‘predictable’ in such uses (Coates 1983: 209). R ep re-

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senting an action as predictable also implies seeing it as some­ thing potential, that is, as an action that has (or had) high chan­ ces o f being performed, and not as an actuality. This is confirmed with respect to another sense o f would by Palmer’sobservation (1983: 212) that the volitional sense behaves the same way as could expressing past capacity. Although one would not say (14), the corresponding negative sentence (15) is perfectly acceptable: (14) (15)

* I asked him and he would come. I asked him but he wouldn’t come.

A final bit o f evidence that the modals do not represent the bare infinitive’s event as subsequent to their ow n event comes from certain observations about the contrast betw een will and be going to made by Palmer (1988: 148). H e notes further to the com­ ments above that while the substitution o f will in (16) ‘would merely say that it would cost him a fortune i f he took them hom e’ (idea o f conditionality), the be going to construction expresses the idea o f a ‘current orientation’ towards the realization of the infini­ tive’s event (here the speaker’s intention to take the books home). (16)

I’m buying an awful lot o f books here. It’s going to cost me a fortune to get them hom e,

This explains w hy the latter cannot be used w hen there is no reference at all to something in the present w hich makes the infinitive’s event an im pending occurrence as is the case in: (17)

th M y babe-in-arms will be 59 on my 89 birthday. (Palmer 1988: 148)

T he implication o f these observations for our discussion is that whereas w ith going to a m ovem ent towards the realization o f the accompanying infinitive’s event is represented as being under way, w ith will there is no idea o f a m ovem ent towards this event (i.e. o f something existing before it in time): the impression is merely that the potentiality for the infinitive’s event already exists, and will be actualized if certain conditions are met. W hereas Palmer focusses exclusively on the non-actual char­

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acter o f the infinitive’s event, we wish to draw attention here to what his observations imply about the nature o f the modal auxil­ iaries and the relation betw een the latter and the bare infinitive. If the event o f the infinitive following the modals could, would and will is represented as non-actual, this entails first o f all that these modals themselves must have a type o f m eaning w hich is non-actualizing. Since we see no reason to treat the other m o­ dals or the other uses o f could, would or will any differently as regards this aspect o f their meaning, w e propose therefore that both the modals and the infinitive w hich follows them express potentialities. This implies in turn that in its use w ith the modal auxiliaries the bare infinitive can be analysed as expressing a potentiality coinciding in time w ith another potentiality (the m odal’s event). T he infinitive’s relation to the modals is thus exactly parallel in the field o f potentiality to that w hich it enter­ tains w ith auxiliary do in the field o f actuality. T he difference betw een them lies simply in the fact that while do situates the infinitive in tim e as an actualization, the modals only situate it as a potentiality. Consequently, for She may own a Porsche, the fol­ lowing diagram can be proposed: own

i may

PAST

NON-PAST

The relation is the same for She may leave tomorrow except that the actualization o f the infinitive’s event w ould be future (if it is realized at all): leave

i

i

may

PAST

NON-PAST

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99

T he role o f the modal auxiliaries is thus to specify the kind of potentiality w hich the potential event expressed by the infinitive has — possibility, probability, necessity, etc. — and the type o f coincidence involved here is that betw een an event conceived as a potentiality and the form o f potentiality w hich it is conceived as having,29 i.e. betw een tw o potentialities.

3 .3 N E E D A N D D A R E Having examined the reasons for the use o f the bare infinitive w ith the modals, it is now possible to deal w ith infinitival usage w ith two verbs w hich function both as m odal auxiliaries and as lexical verbs, need and dare. These verbs are o f great interest for the present study because, unlike may, can, shall, will and must, they can shift from the bare to the to infinitive, according to the meaning they express in discourse, a fact which lends confirmation to the hypothesis that it is the meaning o f the modals which ex­ plains their use with the bare infinitive. Indeed, it will be seen that dare can express a sense very close to its meaning as a modal even while maintaining most o f the syntactic characteristics o f a full verb, in which case it is used with the bare form — eloquent proof that the use o f one or the other version o f the infinitive is conditioned by meaning and not by automatically operating syntactic rules. T he significant fact for explaining infinitival usage w ith dare and need is the type o f context in w hich the modal use w ith the bare infinitive form is found: as Q uirk et al. (1985: 138), follow­ ing on Jacobsson 1974, point out, ‘the modal construction is restricted to non-assertive contexts, i.e. mainly negative and in­ terrogative sentences’. T he table visualizing the essentials o f the contrast betw een the modal and main verb uses is reproduced below.

Positive Negative Interrogative Negativeinterrogative

Modal auxiliary construction

Main verb construction

He needn’t/daren’t escape. Need we/Dare we escape? Needn’t he escape after all? Dare he not escape?

He needed/dared to escape. He doesn’t need/dare to escape. Do we need/dare to escape? Doesn’t he need to escape after all? Doesn’t he dare to escape?

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Q uirk et al. point out further to this that ‘non-assertive contexts’ are not confined to negatives and questions, but also include semi-negatives such as hardly and only, conditional clauses, com ­ parative clauses, putative should-c lauses and restrictive relative clauses w ith conditional meaning. This observation corresponds m ore or less to Jacobsson’s list (pp. 60-2) o f the ten types o f context w here need can be used as a modal: Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5

Type Type Type Type Type

6

7 8 9 10

N eed I be present? I w onder if I need be present. H e needn’t come. There is nothing you need trouble about. N o one need know. I need hardly say how glad I am. H e need only state his opinion clearly. All he need do is state his opinion clearly. It need seldom be required o f us. Standards are lower than they need be. His book covers most that need be said on the subject. I have half an hour to spare before I need go. It is embarrassing that such a truth need be stated at all. H ow ever m uch need be said, let it wait.

Jacobsson describes the com m on denom inator underlying all o f these uses in the following way (p. 62): W hat types (1)—(10) have in com m on is that they are negative or subjunctive, formally or notionally. T he existence o f the necessity or obligation is not asserted but denied, questioned, conceded (in concessive clauses), or represented as a mere conception rather than as a positive fact (‘subjunctive’). Auxil­ iary need tends to occur in the same syntactic environments as at all, ever and any , w hich are typically found in so-called nonassertive sentences. If it is possible at all to find a semantic com m on denom inator for sentences containing auxiliary need, the best candidate w ould probably be ‘non-assertiveness’. In our corpus we have attested need used as a modal in all o f Jacobsson’s ten types except (7), (9) and (10). H ere are examples o f some o f the rarer uses:

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(18)

‘W ell,’ he said, ‘I d o n ’t think we need detain the doctor any longer, eh? T hank you, D octor.’ (Christie 1937: 107)

(19)

T he telephone made m e w onder w hether I need drop this task to answer the call. (LOB F40 36 4)

(20)

Jesus said in effect, ‘W hy should the m an have this de­ formity one day longer than he need?. T h at’s not what the Sabbath rest is for.’ (Sheed 1962: 195)

(21)

I think we have tw o or three hours before we need take the pose. (Waugh 1948: 56; in Erdm ann 1982: 99)

(22)

Plenty o f time yet — thirty miles before I need begin to feel uncomfortable. (Sayers 1926: 80; in Erdm ann 1982: 99)

T he auxiliary use o f need has also been found in the following type o f sentence not listed by Jacobsson: (23)

By co-vary, we mean that the m ore a language has of one o f the processes, the less it need have o f the other. (Keenan 1978: 120)

T he non-assertive implication associated w ith less is very clear here however. A non-assertive quality can also be perceived to underlie the following use, w hich Jacobsson, strangely enough, feels to be a ‘separate category’ —w hat he calls the ‘marginal use o f auxiliary need in conditional clauses’ (p. 62, fn 17): (24)

If you need borrow m oney at all, borrow as little as possible.

As signalled by at all, however, this use also suggests a negative bias on the part o f the speaker against the existence o f any real

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need to borrow money, and so does not belong in a separate category from the others at all: it is just as non-assertive as all the rest. T he use o f dare as a modal auxiliary follows the same pattern as need. T he modal construction has been found in the following types o f context w hich fall into Jacobsson’s ten categories: (25)

H er restlessness wakened her bedfellows m ore than once. She daren’t read m ore o f W alter Lorraine: Father was at hom e, [negative] (Thackeray 1850: 613; in Jespersen 1931: 12)

(26)

Dare she ring him at the office? H e had asked her never

to do that, [interrogative] (M urdoch 1968: 223; in Visser 1969: 1439) (27)

N o t one o f them dare support you. [shifted negation] (Shaw 1930: 41; in M ulder 1937: 32)

(28)

I just sat there and it seemed I hardly dare breathe for a m inute or two. [semi-negative] (Naughton 1970: 280; in Erdm ann 1982: 97)

(29)

She was silent; for to rouse her tyrant was m ore than she dare do. [comparative clause] (Kingsley 1857b: 214; in O E D , sub ‘dare’)

(30)

But launching a new cigarette in today’s climate o f dis­ approval requires finesse. T he company is advertising its Premiers as ‘a cleaner sm oke’, the furthest it dare go. [superlative] (The Economist, 17 September 1988: 33)

It has also been found in the following four contexts: (31)

‘T he living have never used that road since the com ing o f the R o h errim ,’ said Aragorn, ‘for it is closed to them . But in this dark hour the heir o f Isildur may use it, if he dare.’ (Tolkien 1968: 812)

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(32)

It was true that he himself was ignored by the countess as m uch as she dare ignore him . . . (Johnson 1959: 100; in Erdm ann 1982: 99)

(33)

H ow dare he take the native’s part against her! (Lessing 1950: 82; in Erdm ann 1982: 99)

(34)

But she had forgiven the pot man. They were friends. She dare now finger his pots. So she was happy. (Lawrence 1913: 96; in Visser 1969: 1438)

T he non-assertive character o f the first three is quite obvious: the conditional clause leaves the actualization o f dare up in the air in (31); (32) implies ‘she didn’t dare ignore him any m ore than that’; (33) is a sort o f indignant rhetorical question implying that he shouldn’t have dared take the native’s part against her. (34) shows that the w ord now can, astonishingly enough, some­ times carry a negative implication: in this sentence it implies ‘not before’, the im port here being ‘She hadn’t dared finger his pots before the present m om ent’. All the uses o f need and dare as full modal auxiliaries involve therefore a non-assertive quality w hereby the needing or daring are not asserted but denied, questioned, conceded, represented as mere possibilities rather than as real events. T he significance of this for the way the daring and needing are put into relation w ith the infinitive’s event should be obvious. If dare and need are not asserted as realities, then they must be conceived as mere potentialities, and since the infinitive also expresses a non-actual event in these uses, it must also be represented as a potentiality. This produces a representation o f a potential event (that o f the infinitive) coinciding in tim e w ith another potentiality (non­ asserted dare or need), on w hich it is dependent for its actualiza­ tion. Since both need/dare and the infinitive evoke potentialities, no before/after relation is felt to pertain betw een them and so to is not necessary for the same reason as it is not used w ith the modal auxiliaries. Indeed, need and dare allow us to see even m ore clearly how it is that the modals fail to constitute a before-position w ith respect to the event expressed by the infinitive. Com parison o f the

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modal use o f these tw o verbs w ith w hat occurs in affirmative contexts shows that w hen need and dare are positively asserted, the needing and daring are necessarily felt to represent before­ positions relative to the infinitive’s event. This explains w hy it is strictly impossible to om it to in: (35)

H e needs to do m ore exercise.

(36)

Carefully, cunningly, he was daring to turn the whole situation round to his advantage. (Sands 1975: 164; in Erdm an 1982: 102)

H ere the needing and the daring are situated in tim e as realities, and as such they must necessarily be conceived as occupying a before-position w ith respect to do and turn , as a need calling for action and an exercising o f audacity leading to the achieving o f a result. W hen, however, need and dare are used non-assertively, it is possible for the speaker to feel that there is nothing real (no real need or daring) situated in time to constitute a before-posi­ tion in relation to the event evoked by the infinitive, and so to use the bare infinitive after these verbs as w ith the modals. T he difference betw een need and dare and the modals is simply that the latter are by the very nature o f their lexical m eaning inca­ pable o f evoking a reality, while the form er can evoke poten­ tialities only in non-assertive use.30 Convincing confirmation o f this analysis is provided by the interrogative adverbs how and why in their use w ith the infini­ tive. How evokes lexically the idea o f ‘means’, i.e. that w hich allows the achievement o f an end, w ithout specifying the precise nature o f these means. Given the fact that the temporal relation betw een means and end is clearly one o f before to after, and the fact that w hen used w ith an infinitive how denotes the means and the infinitive the end, our hypothesis leads us to predict that to should be found after how. This is indeed the case in most uses: (37)

H ow to he Happy though M arried

(Jespersen 1940: 324) (38)

They taught m e how to use a word-processor.

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H ow ever, the bare infinitive is also found after how, and al­ though this construction is far less frequent than the one w ith to,31 it cannot be dismissed as nonce usage since fifteen cases have come to light thus far. M oreover the m eaning is not at all the same as w ith to + infinitive, as can be seen from the sample sentences below: (39)

For years she had been driving illegally w ith a licence obtained in Italy w here her brother had sent the exam­ iner a case o f wine — not necessary, but she had felt bolstered. Here, how give a bribe? C om ing from a w om an m ight not a case o f w ine be misconstrued? (O ’Faolain 1983, in C huquet 1986: VI)

(40)

She explained that she had w orked as a volunteer in the parish and had felt that in doing this she was shar­ ing his ministry — how ask him to give it up? She apo­ logized if this sounded abysmally stupid. (O ’Faolain 1983, in C huquet 1986: VI)

(41)

T he question that focusses the problem m ost sharply is: ‘how handle sets o f data manifesting a superficial identity o f patterning, some sets o f w hich have a psychological reality for a society as a rule-generated scheme, but others not?’ (Language Sciences 1969, 7: 15)

(42)

If he was small enough to sell his Lord for so little, how account for the remorse w hich led him to suicide w hen he realized that Christ was to be slain? T he truth is that there is too m uch about Judas . . . that w e do not know. (Sheed 1962: 347)

(43)

To the Jews listening, it seemed an assertion o f two Gods, himself being one o f them , blasphemy therefore and by Jewish law m eriting death. Later (Mk 12: 29) they w ould hear him affirm the oneness o f God, but how reconcile that w ith this? (Sheed 1962: 243)

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THE ENGLISH I NFI NITI VE

(44)

H ow then explain the peculiar animus w ith w hich Eymeric and some o f his D om inican successors attacked the opinions and works o f R am on Lull? (Walsh 1940: 127)

(45)

H ow express N ature, its translucence and mysterious

unities . . . Beauty! W hat use —how express it? (Galsworthy 1923: 360) W hat is im portant for explaining the occurrence o f the bare in­ finitive here is the way the means are view ed by the speaker: all the uses o f how + bare infinitive involve a clear negative bias as to the existence o f any means o f realizing the event denoted by the infinitive. This makes how + bare infinitive the equivalent o f how can or how could, a paraphrase w hich is applicable to all o f the uses attested thus far. T he implications o f this for the relation betw een how and the infinitive are exacdy the same as w ith need and dare: if the means o f realizing the infinitive’s event are not felt to exist, then there is felt to be nothing real occupying the before-position w hich real means always occupy w ith respect to the end pursued, and therefore no to preceding the infinitive. If, on the other hand, the means are conceived as really or probably existing, then the speaker feels that there is something real occu­ pying a before-position w ith respect to the infinitive’s event, and so uses to, as in (37) and (38) above. As for why , this interrogative adverb evokes the reasons calling for an action and, like how , leaves their precise nature undefined. (In passing this is w hy how and why can function as interrogative adverbs to request identification o f the means required to achieve some end or the reason for something.) As w ith how , the temporal relation betw een the reasons and the action they call for is one o f ‘before’ to ‘after’. W hy functions in almost opposite fashion to how , however, in that whereas the most com m on use w ith the latter involves taking for granted the existence o f the means (how to), the form er is used w ith the infinitive exclusively in cases w here the speaker is questioning the existence o f any good reason to perform the event denoted by the infinitive: (46)

W hy bother to reply?

(Q uirk et al. 1985: 820)

THE INFI NITI VE I N C I D E N T TO A U X I L I AR Y VERBS

(47)

107

W hy make so m uch fuss?

(Q uirk et al. 1985: 820) As Q uirk et al. point out, such uses have a ‘negative orientation’: the speaker does not think that any good reasons exist at all for perform ing the event w hich the infinitive denotes. This recalls the auxiliary use o f need in questions, and indeed (46) and (47) above are equivalent to W hy need we bother? and W hy need you make so much fuss'?, w ith all four sentences implying ‘for no good reason’ (cf. de C ornulier 1978: 130). This negative bias entails how ever that in the speaker’s eyes there are no real reasons w hich can be conceived as occupying the before-position w hich a reason normally occupies w ith respect to the action it calls for; and since there is consequently nothing w hich can be situated in tim e before this action, the m eaning o f to does not apply in this use. Infinitival usage after how and why thus confirms our analysis o f the way the modals are put into relation w ith the infinitive. Yet further confirmation o f this analysis is to be found in the explanation o f the bare infinitive’s use after dare in w hat Q uirk et al. (1985: 138) call ‘blends betw een the auxiliary and the main verb construction’. All o f the uses found o f such blends w hich contain the bare infinitive are also in some way non-assertive, although this non-assertiveness can take on some very subtle forms. T he non-assertive quality is o f course obvious in all the uses o f blend dare w hich parallel those o f the full modal: (48)

And w hen I saw he was attracted by someone else, the fear and the jealousy that seized me! You see, I didn’t dare make a scene as I should have done if I’d been married. I had to pretend not to notice. (Maugham 1933: 86; in Jespersen 1940: 176)

(49)

D id he dare set him self up to be finer clay than the com m on soldier? (Locke 1917: 100; in Poutsma 1923: 22)

(50)

W e shall see w hether you dare keep your word. (Shaw 1906: 92; in M ulder 1937: 33) (The speaker thinks that the unpleasant consequences w hich can be foreseen if the listener keeps his w ord will dissuade him from doing so.)

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THE ENGLISH INFI NITI VE

(51)

And one w ould hardly dare suggest that her musical life conforms . . . (LOB E22 14 85)

(52)

O nly doctors dare do it. (Arlen 1924: 165; in M ulder 1937: 31) (‘N o one else dares.’)

(53)

I told you all I dared tell. (Hichens 1904: 411; in M ulder 1937: 34) (‘I dared tell you no m ore.’)

(54)

. . . and then your looks and m ovem ents will offer m ore vivacity and variety than they dare offer now. (C. Bronte 1848: 275) (‘They dare offer no m ore than that now .’)

(55)

I found a bottle w ith w hich I made num erous marks on the ground surrounding our tents and a few yards into the jungle, as far as I dared venture. (LOB M 03 50 12) (‘I dared venture no further.’)

(56)

. . . the nearest he dared go w ith the set o f the sea rolling both ships towards each other at the same in­ stant. (MacLean 1972: 199; in Erdm ann 1982: 99) (‘H e dared go no nearer than that.’)

(57)

By God, if he dares come here again, I’ll make him damned sorry he did. (O ’N eill 1919: 75) (‘H e daren’t come here again or I’ll make him damned sorry he did.’)

(58)

Mrs Thatcher realizes that there is a great deal to be done before she dares launch an all-out offensive in the House o f Com m ons. (The Spectator, 29 M arch 1975: 366.1; in Erdm ann 1982: 104)

THE IN FINITIVE IN C I D E N T T O A U X IL IA R Y VERBS

109

(‘She doesn’t dare launch an all-out offensive until the groundw ork has been laid for it’) In addition to these, blend dare has also been found w ith the bare infinitive in a num ber o f other categorizable contexts, all o f w hich can also be shown to be som ehow non-assertive: (59)

I only wish I dared write to him. (Le Q ueux 1921: 143; in M ulder 1937: 34)

(60)

It may be said that few middle-class couples dare marry w ithout this admirable handbook. (Lessing 1965: 250; in Erdm ann 1982: 97)

(61)

That may be the first tim e in m y life that a m an has dared insult me. (King H um perdinck speaking to Wesley in the film Princess Bride)

(62)

I was not quite sure w hether they had locked the door; and w hen I dared move, I got up and w ent to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever m ore secure. (C. Bronte 1848: 17)

(63)

Tw o months ago, I should have scouted as m ad or drunk the m an w ho had dared tell m e the like. (Kipling 1888: 9; in Poutsma 1923: 31)

(64)

Let m e hear now w ho dares call him profligate. (Sheridan 1778: 406; in Poutsma 1923: 28)

(65)

‘I shall now select m y Empress!’ he said, looking down on the cowering people. ‘Let the first w om an w ho dares rise to her feet claim her m ate and her throne.’ (Vonnegut 1961; in Escholz and Rosa 1988: 556)

W ith the verb wish in (59), the non-existence o f w hat is wished (= dare) is clearly entailed. In (60), a negative idea is expressed by fe w m eaning ‘not m any’. R eflection on (61) reveals that the ordinal adjective f r s t implies that there w ere none before that

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THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

time: the m eaning o f this sentence is therefore that ‘no one had ever dared insult m e before \ When implies something similar in (62), w here one understands that the speaker felt she didn’t dare m ove before the m om ent evoked by when. (63)—(65) are exam­ ples o f restrictive relative clauses w hich have conditional, and consequently non-assertive m eaning (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 784). They could be paraphrased by: (63-)

If anyone had dared tell m e the like tw o m onths ago, I w ould have scouted him as mad or drunk.

(64—)

Let me hear now w hether anyone dares call him profli­ gate.

(65—)

If any one o f you w om en dares rise to her feet, she can claim her mate and her throne.

Such uses fell therefore into characterizable types of non-assertive use. O ther cases o f blend dare are not so easy to categorize. In some o f these the non-assertive quality o f the utterance is fairly easy to perceive nevertheless: (66)

H e dared as m uch have opposed his wife’s whims as he dare have com m itted high treason. (Trafford 1861: 294; in Swaen 1897: 220)

(67)

I should like to see them dare say a w ord against me. (Shaw 1906: 49; in M ulder 1937: 37)

(68)

Look at me, Sir, and dare tell me there is any reason w hy I should take your w ord. (Harper’s Magazine 7: 182; in Poutsma 1923: 28)

Thus (66) implies ‘H e didn’t dare oppose his wife’s whims any m ore than he dared com m it high treason’, (67) that the speaker is o f the opinion that they w ouldn’t dare say a w ord against him, and in (68) the speaker very clearly believes that the addressee doesn’t have the cheek to look him in the eye and tell such an obvious lie. In other uses how ever the non-assertiveness takes on considerably m ore subde forms.

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111

Such is the case, for instance, in (69) below, w here the phrase the notion that suggests surprise at someone having done such a

thing as was done, thereby implying that the speaker w ould not have thought such audacity possible if the occurrence o f the event referred to had not come to his knowledge: (69)

. . . one o f those heroes, the air ace Billy Bishop, was recently the focus o f a bitter wrangle betw een the N a­ tional Film Board and the Senate. T he notion that senators w ould dare criticize even so m inor a branch o f the media as the NFB guaranteed the outcom e. (United Church Observer, 1986)

Although the speaker is obviously not denying the fact that the Senate dared to criticize the National Film Board in this use, he is saying on the other hand that he w ould not have thought it possible for Senators to dare to do such a thing, given the sa­ crosanct character o f the media. This covert attitude o f declaring oneself unable to conceive as possible an exercising o f audacity w hich in fact really took place gives the impression that the speaker thinks that the persons w ho did the action should have know n better than to try. T he significant point how ever is that the speaker is evoking his view o f the possibility o f the daring, and it is only by logical implication that w e infer his opinion o f its realization. In the sentence below, the underlying attitude o f the speaker is betrayed somewhat by the adverb actually (suggesting ‘you may not believe this’), and one understands as in (69) that he w ould not have thought it possible for someone to be so audacious as the public relations officer was: (70)

But D rew was as determ ined as any Soviet Commissar to fulfil his self-imposed quota, and the fuse to his tem ­ per began smouldering w henever anyone suggested the 15% target m ight be overly ambitious. H e actually fired a public relations officer w ho had dared argue that the real sales figures were one or tw o percentage points short o f the goal. (Ignatieff 1987)

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THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

O ften, however, one cannot point to any specific w ord signall­ ing the speaker’s point o f view. In such contexts, the main clues showing that the speaker feels som eone’s having dared to per­ form a certain action to be hard to imagine is the nature o f the act itself or the circumstances under w hich it was performed. T he form er is probably the case in the following: (71)

W hen Agam em non dares bring his concubine, the prophetess Cassandra, hom e from Troy, Clytemnestra kills them both and exults in full-bodied fury unfit for prudish ears. (Stone 1988: 38) (‘W hen Agam em non does the unthinkable, i.e. brings his concubine hom e, something w hich he should have know n better than to do . . .’)

(72)

T hough the city was ‘full o f idols’ and he dared argue against paganism in the agora ‘w ith those w ho chanced to be there,’ he m et w ith intellectual curiosity rather than charges o f impiety. (Stone 1988: 246) (‘T hough he did what one w ould normally find incon­ ceivable for someone to risk doing in a city full o f idols • • •’)

(73)

A Fine and Private Place is the w ork o f a genuine fabulist

aborning. In a haggard era w hich finds loud lies sm othering truths in every crib and pallet and bed, and w ith the older authors banging their skulls against the W ailing Wall, this young poet and novelist dares deny that the great G od Pan is dead. (Gene Fow ler on the book jacket o f Beagle 1990) (‘This young poet and novelist dares do what is practically inconceivable that he should do in that social context.’) (74)

In her first song she waved away one encroaching photographer w h o dared approach the throne unbidden (Svartvik 1968: 134) (implies ‘he should have know n better than to . . .’)

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113

(75)

Socrates is apologetic that such a question was even asked the oracle and blames this on C haerophon, the disciple w ho dared broach it. (Stone 1988: 79) (implies that such a question should never even have been asked, i.e. it was practically inconceivable for Soc­ rates that one o f his disciples should ask it)

(76)

Joe Louis, destroying every fistic pretender w ho dared cross gloves w ith him, was a gladiator never to be for­ gotten. (Sun, 24 September 1975: 26-1; in Erdm ann 1982: 99) (implies that they should have know n better than to cross gloves w ith Joe Louis)

T he circumstances, on the other hand, seem to play a greater role in: (77)

It seems that publication in The Times last m onth o f M r B enn’s report to the T U C —Labour Party Liaison C om ­ m ittee on the D epartm ent o f Industry’s current w ork program m e has angered M r W ilson [= the Prime M in­ ister] . . . Additionally, it is said that M r Benn [= the Secretary o f State for Industry] has dared break a rather long de­ partmental silence w ith a couple o f speeches ( . . . ) , to tell how election pledges will be fulfilled and private industry is lining its pockets w ith state m oney w ith no strings attached. (The Times, 13 June 1974: 25.4; in Erdm ann 1982: 104) (‘M r Benn has dared do something he should have know n better than to do, given Prim e M inister W il­ son’s present hostility towards any statement that m ight upset private industry.’)

In any case, all o f these uses evoke the speaker’s view o f the possibility o f someone being so audacious as to perform the event denoted by the infinitive, and all imply a negative prejudice against such a thing being possible. This relates them to all the other uses o f blend and modal dare seen above, dare

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itself being conceived as a mere possibility, thereby negating or questioning its existence as a reality constituting a before-posi­ tion w ith respect to the event perform ed due to the daring (that expressed by the infinitive). Since the speaker is discussing the possibility and not the reality o f daring, he feels that there is no real daring occupying the before-position that daring normally occupies w ith respect to the event dared, and consequently does not use to in these contexts.

3 .4

OUGHT

This is also the place to deal w ith the occurrence o f the bare infinitive after the verb ought (cf. Q uirk et al. 1985: 139). As these authors point out, to can only be dropped (optionally) in non-assertive contexts (as w ith dare and need), the fo-less form being completely unacceptable to speakers o f English in assertive uses: (78) (79)

*W e ought give him another chance. They ought not (to) do that sort o f thing.

As seen above w ith need and dare, therefore, it is only w hen ought is not asserted but conceived as a m ere possibility that it can cease to constitute a before-position w ith respect to the event expressed by the infinitive and be followed by the bare infinitive.

3 .5

SU M M A RY

T he examination o f the use o f the infinitive w ith auxiliary verbs shows that the bare infinitive can express the same meanings o f actualization and potentiality observed w ith the to infinitive. Just as the latter is capable o f expressing both subsequent actualization and subsequent potentiality, the form er can evoke coincident ac­ tualization and coincident potentiality. These typical senses o f the infinitive are summed up in the table below:

THE IN FINITIVE I N C I D E N T TO A U X IL IA R Y VERBS

A ctu a liza tio n P oten tiality

Coincidence

Subsequence

I did sw im across the river in 10 minutes. I could sw im across the river in 10 minutes.

I managed to sw im across the river in 10 minutes. I hoped to sw im across the river in 10 minutes.

115

T he bare infinitive is therefore no less versatile than the to infini­ tive in being able to express a happening as real or only poten­ tial, w hich is not surprising given the fact that the to infinitive is composed o f the preposition to + the bare infinitive.

Four

The infinitive not incident to another verb

4 .1 I N T R O D U C T I O N All the cases analysed up to this point have involved a relation­ ship o f incidence betw een the infinitive and some other verb. It has been seen that the bare infinitive is used w henever the tw o events are represented as coinciding in tim e, either as tw o ac­ tualities (after full verbs and auxiliary do) or as tw o potentialities (after the modal auxiliaries). To is used w hen the infinitive event is conceived as com ing after that o f the other verb. This analysis must how ever be extended if it is to cover all the uses o f the infinitive since there are also cases in w hich the latter is not in relation w ith another verb, as in the following exclamations: (1)

O h to be in England now that April’s there! (Browning 1896: 272; in Jespersen 1940: 330)

(2)

You unm anly fellow! to treat a w om an so w ho took you off the street. (Thackeray 1850: 901; in Jespersen 1940: 329)

(3)

N o t Jire until the bombs came down? H e thought o f the tons and tons o f flammable liquid beneath his feet and shook his head. (BUC F02 0950 8)

To take sentence (1) above as an example, if one follows the hypothesis developed here, to signifies that the infinitive event is

THE IN FINITIVE N O T I N C I D E N T T O A N O T H E R VERB

117

conceived as com ing after something else. T he problem in this case how ever is: W hat is it that it comes after? T he use o f the to infinitive as subject poses the same problem: W hat can the in­ finitive event be situated after in To visit the sick is a Christian obligation (B. Conrad 1982: 119)? T he attem pt to answer this question leads us into a hitherto little-explored region o f English grammar since it poses the problem o f the relation betw een the infinitive and the category o f person, and takes us back to a use not yet analysed satisfactorily, the so-called ‘infinitive o f reaction’.

4 .2 T H E T O I N F I N I T I V E I N E X C L A M A T I O N S D E N O T IN G A N O N -R EA LIZED EVENT T he easiest uses to com e to grips w ith are exclamations such as (1) above, because they give a very clear impression o f som ehow looking at the infinitive event from a position before: they ex­ press a desire or longing to realize the infinitive event, so that (1) m ight be paraphrased ‘I w ould love to be in England . . . ’. T he use o f I in the paraphrase suggests m oreover that it is the speaker w ho som ehow sees himself before the infinitive event because it implies that he has not yet realized his desire. O th er examples show how ever that the person o f w hich the infinitive event is predicated is not always the speaker: (4)

. . . but he was differendy designed, full o f desires and aspirations, itching at the fingers, lusting with the eyes, w hom the whole variegated world could not satisfy with aspects. The true life, the true bright sunshine, lay far out upon the plain. And O! to see this sunlight once before he died! to move with a jocund spirit in a golden land! (Stevenson 1887: 79; in Jespersen 1940: 330)

H ere the paraphrase w ould be ‘how he longed to see this sun­ light once before he died!’, but the fact remains that the person designated by he in this example is felt as not yet having attained the realization o f ‘seeing the sunlight once m ore’, i.e. as being before this event in time. In this first type o f exclamation, the impression then is that the person w ho w ould have been evoked as the subject if the verb were in a finite form is represented as

118

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som ehow before the infinitive event. T he realization o f this event is thus felt to be prospective, an object o f the longing or desire o f this person, hence the need for to. T he second type o f exclamation, as in (2), poses a somewhat different problem . Like the first type, it always implies incidence to an actualizer o f the infinitive event, someone or something w hich w ould have been explicitly expressed as the subject had the verb been finite. Thus in (2) this implied ‘subject’ can be identified as the person w ho is being addressed. In (5) the sup­ port o f predication is also the listener: (5)

‘B ut to leave Pa!’ Em m y’s bewildered m ind w ent back to w hat was the real difficulty. Jenny protested. ‘H e was in bed. I thought h e’d be safe . . . ’ (Swinnerton 1917: 251; in Kruisinga and Erades 1960: 362)

In (6), however, the infinitive is im puted to the person referred to by he : (6)

Sir Jee was taken aback. H e, the chairman o f the bo­ rough Bench, and the leading philanthropist in the county, to be so spoken to! (Bennett 1907: 145; in Jespersen 1940: 329)

This second type o f exclamation cannot be analysed in exactly the same terms as the first type, however, since the infinitive refers to an event w hich has already occurred and not to one whose occurrence is an object o f som eone’s longing or desire. Nevertheless, both types do imply incidence to an actualizer o f the infinitive’s event, a fact w hich poses the problem o f the rela­ tion betw een the infinitive and the category o f person, w hich must be explored in order to analyse (2) — and other uses, such as that in subject function —adequately.

4 .3 T H E V E R B A N D T H E C A T E G O R Y O F PERSON T he presence o f person is direcdy observable in the finite forms o f the verb, either in grammatical endings or in a preceding

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119

noun or pronoun denoting the subject: (7)

W hat does he do? R u m away. (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 199)

(8)

H e ran away.

Furtherm ore, traditional grammar sees in the finite verb a w ord w hich predicates something about its subject: T he grammatical function o f a finite verb is to serve as a predicate w ord, that is, in an ordinary affirmative sentence to state something about the subject o f the sentence . . . (Sweet 1898: 93) In this connection, the above observations on the exclamatory use o f the infinitive raise an im portant question: does the infini­ tive also have a predicative function? As a means o f answering this question, the predicative func­ tion o f the verb can be situated in the m uch m ore general fram ework o f a mechanism w hich seems fundamental to all words that evoke a lexical content. Guillaume (1984: 120ff) shows that all substantives, adjectives, adverbs and verbs are in­ herently predicative because they bring to m ind a lexical notion w hich has to be said about something in order for the w ord to perform its function in discourse. Indeed, as Valin (1981: 6—7) points out, any act o f language must fulfil the basic condition of saying something about someone or something. T he ‘something w hich is said is called by Guillaume an ‘im port o f m eaning’ (1984: 120—2) and corresponds on the linguistic level to the lexeme or non-grammatical part o f the w ord’s meaning. T he ‘som ething’ about w hich the lexeme is said, that to w hich the lexeme is ‘incident’, is called by Guillaume the ‘support’; it forms part o f the grammatical m ake-up o f certain words, corre­ sponding on the formal level to the category o f person. Thus the substantive apple contains the lexical idea o f a kind o f fruit: this is its material significate, or lexeme, the im port o f meaning w hich is said o f some object in the speaker’s experience. In the case o f the substantive apple, it is obvious that the lexeme evoked by this w ord can only be applied to objects o f our ex-

120

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perience w hich are by nature apples: it cannot be said o f a pen or an eraser. T he support o f the lexeme o f apple can therefore be discovered simply by confronting our experience w ith the no­ tion itself. This is w hat Guillaume (1984: 121-2) calls ‘internal incidence’: what the lexeme can be applied to is determ ined in advance since its nature is defined by the lexical notion contained in the word. Internal incidence is characteristic o f all substantives. Since the notional content o f adjectives, on the other hand, does not define the nature o f their support but only a quality thereof they can be said to have external incidence. O ne cannot know w hat an adjective is being applied to just by considering its lexical meaning: the support o f an adjective is defined by something outside the adjective’s ow n lexical content. T he ad­ jective beautiful, for example, denotes a quality w hich can be found in m any different objects and therefore does not by itself indicate the nature o f that about w hich it is said. To designate the support o f the notion ‘beautiful’ one must make the adjec­ tive incident to another w ord, normally a substantive, as in a beautiful painting , because the notion o f ‘beautiful’ itself can be said o f anything that strikes the speaker as having this quality: a beautiful sunset, a beautiful house, a beautiful stallion, a beautiful thought, etc. Like adjectives, verbs also have external incidence: their lexi­ cal content evokes a state or process w hich does not o f itself define w hat it is said of. Thus a given verbal lexeme such as ‘exist’ can be said o f an infinite num ber o f different supports: / exist, you exist, this chair exists, etc. As w ith the adjective, the finite verb must be put into relation w ith another w ord, in the case o f the finite verb its subject, in order to define the support to w hich the lexeme is applied. T he subject expresses the lexical nature, if it is a substantive, and the ordinal person (first, second, third), if it is a pronoun, o f the support to w hich the verbal lexeme is m ade incident. T he definition o f the support’s ordinal rank involves situating the support (= the person spoken about) w ith respect to the speaking relationship: the verb can be predi­ cated o f the speaker (person spoken o f = speaker), o f the person to w hom he is speaking (person spoken o f = the one spoken to), o f someone or something not participating in the act o f speech (person spoken o f = neither speaker nor person spoken to), etc.

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121

T hat the verb should require a subject to define the person o f its support does not m ean how ever that the category o f person is not represented in the verb itself. In languages such as Latin or Spanish, where the finite verb has distinctive endings for each ordinal person and can even dispense w ith expressing the subject outside the verb, person quite obviously finds representation w ithin the verbal system. This is less obvious in English, w here all that remains o f personal endings is the -5 o f the non-past. This ending is nevertheless an indication that ordinal person is still present in the interior m ake-up o f the English finite verb. W hile such views are com m on doctrine in grammars as far as finite forms are concerned, it will be proposed here that a sup­ port or person is also present in the infinitival form o f the verb, even though the latter can neither be predicated grammatically o f a subject nor take any personal endings. There are several indications o f the presence o f this support however. Harris (1982: 52) points out, for instance, that the occurrence o f self w ith the infinitive reveals the existence o f w hat he calls a ‘sub­ je c t’, so that, in transformational terms, ‘To hate oneself is unwise can only come from For one to hate oneself is unwise \ Dolbec and Le Flem ’s (1980: 31 Off) argum ent from the use o f a predicate adjunct w ith the French infinitive can also be applied to English. If the predicate adjunct to the subject is felt to qualify the sup­ port o f the verb in She was alone, it w ould seem plausible that in (9) alone is also incident to the support o f the verb (used here in the infinitival form), even though there is no subject pronoun to identify this support’s ordinal rank. (9)

To be alone was a w elcom e change.

O n the semantic level, thirdly, it has been observed that even though infinitives have no endings for person or num ber, they do have ‘a reference to some subject . . . ; though their gram­ matical dependence connects them frequently w ith some other term ’ (Brown 1884: 337). U nlike the support o f finite forms, however, the support o f the infinitive can be left completely unspecified as to its ordinal rank. This can be seen from (10), w here one feels that seeing and loving are potentially predicated o f any support capable of realizing these actions (‘y o u ’> ‘him ’, ‘anyone’).

122

(10)

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

To see her is to love her.

This is w hy this account will follow Guillaume (1990: 99) in postulating that the support o f the infinitive is a ‘generalized per­ son’ not yet defined explicitly as either first, second or third, nor even necessarily calling for ordinal definition (cf. (10) above). An interesting bit o f supporting evidence for this view o f per­ son in the infinitive is provided by w eather verbs, w hich can only have a third person support (it) because o f their notional import. T he infinitives o f such verbs are found only w here the person o f their support is specified (W e want it to snow), but not w hen the support is left undefined, as in certain exclamations, and not in the function o f subject (*To snow is pleasant).32 This is quite understandable if the non-specified version o f the infini­ tive’s support corresponds to a ‘generalized person’: since this person is the virtual sum o f all persons (first, second or third), if to snow is not explicitly referred to it, the infinitive is felt as having a possible reference to ‘m e’ or ‘y o u ’, w hich corresponds exactly to the impression produced by the sentence above and explains w hy it does not make sense. O f m ore immediate interest for this study is the fact that this way o f regarding the infinitive throws new light on uses such as (1) discussed above. W e can now not only see w hy in such sentences one feels an implicit predication w ith respect to a sup­ port but also get a clearer view o f w hy to is used before the infinitive: its role here seems to be simply that o f indicating that the infinitive’s support is situated in time before the actualization o f the infinitive’s event. In (1) above this gives rise to an im ­ pression o f a prospective event, o f a desire or longing on the part o f the speaker to realize the action denoted by the infini­ tive, so that the to infinitive produces basically the same sort o f impression in this first type o f exclamation as in H e struggled to get free: it evokes a prospective non-realized event. In (2), on the other hand, w e w ould seem to have the equivalent o f H e man­ aged to get free, that is, a use where the to infinitive evokes a subsequent actualization (i.e. a realized event). This latter use raises the question how ever o f describing w hat is implied as leading up to the realization o f the infinitive event, that is, o f justifying w hy the speaker should want to represent the infinitive incident to a support conceived as occupying a before-position

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123

w ith respect to the infinitive’s event. In order to answer that question, however, we must first take a look at the so-called ‘infinitive o f reaction’ and at the use o f the infinitive as subject o f a sentence.

4 .4

TH E IN FIN ITIV E OF R E A C T IO N

T he use w hich has received this appellation from Jespersen (1940: 259—60) can be illustrated by sentences such as: (11)

I am glad (happy, delighted, pleased, proud, sorry, angry, ashamed, disappointed, surprised, astonished) to see you here.

(12)

H e rejoiced (His joy) to fin d her in good health.

(13)

H e delighted (His delight) to prove me wrong.

(14)

H e smiled (frowned) to see her joy.

T he difficulty presented by this use is that, to take (11) as an example, the seeing already exists at the m om ent o f speech, at the m om ent o f being glad, and, in fact, is apparently what brought about the gladness, hence Jespersen’s term . (In passing, as has been noted by Poldauf (1968: 8), this is a misnomer, since it is the main verb, not the infinitive, w hich denotes the reac­ tion.) As Jespersen points out, ‘here we have a reference to an event that is past, or at any rate contem poraneous, in relation to the time o f the main verb’, that is, just the opposite sequence o f events to that w hich our hypothesis should have led us to ex­ pect. Com parison w ith another related construction — that contain­ ing a subordinate clause — brings the m eaning o f the infinitive into clearer focus how ever and shows the reason for the use o f to:

(15a)

I am glad to know that he is safe.

(15b)

I am glad I know that he is safe.

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THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

Putting these sentences into a broader situation reveals that they do not presuppose the same thing and that, in spite o f Jespersen’s claim that the infinitive event is represented as occurring before the existence o f the gladness, exactly the opposite is the case in the way the speaker represents the situation. Thus (15a) presup­ poses that the person referred to by I has been waiting for news about someone w hom he thought to be in danger, whereas (15b) does not, and m ight be said rather by someone w ho is comparing himself w ith other people w ho do not know this fact. Consequently, while it is true to say that the sentence w ith the to infinitive evokes a realized event, this is only part o f the story: it also evokes the dispositions o f the support previous to the realization o f the happening denoted by the infinitive. This is perhaps even clearer in a past context. Com pare, for example: (16a)

I was glad to see the police car come around the corner.

(16b)

I was glad I saw the police car come around the corner.

Although in both cases it can be argued that the sight o f the police car is w hat caused the speaker to be glad, the way in w hich these notions are put into relation is not the same. W hile in (16b) the speaker is not represented as having any kind o f expectations at all, in (16a) he is: the sentence w ith the infinitive means that the speaker was hoping for someone to come to his assistance even before this happened. T he police car can be said to be represented as a ‘welcom e sight’, and there is therefore a reference to the tim e before its appearance w hich is not present in the sentence w ith the subordinate clause. This reference to a mental prehistory o f the infinitive event has also been observed by other authors. Poldauf (1968: 8), for instance, completes Jespersen’s description o f the infinitive o f re­ action by pointing out that: Jespersen . . . overlooked the fact that only ‘reaction’ im­ plying evaluation can be construed w ith the infinitive. Thus She smiled to hear me talk like that/H e shuddered to hear o f it are grammatical, *H e jumped aside to see the car approaching at high speed/She was silent to be told she was wrong are not.

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Poldauf even refers to the ‘evaluative prehistory’ o f a verb such as smile as being that w hich makes the use o f the infinitive possible (1972: 88). W ierzbicka (1988: 103ff), following on Bol­ inger 1984, points out likewise that ‘if m y attitude to an event is such that I am glad or sorry about it, this means that in advance o f this event I could have predicted my emotional reaction to it’. She proposes consequently the following paraphrase o f I was sorry to fail:

If I had know n this: this will happen to m e (I will fail) I w ould have thought this: this will be bad, I will feel sorry w hen I thought this: I know this now: it happened to me I felt it (sorry) W hat is significant for understanding w hy to is used w ith the infinitive o f reaction is that the notion o f ‘evaluation’ implies a judgem ent as to w hether the event was opportune or not, and this judgem ent involves an implicit reference to the situation as it existed before the infinitive event occurred, i.e. to the factors m aking its occurrence either opportune or inopportune. In other words, to is used here to evoke: (a) the situation as it was before the infinitive’s event was realized, and (b) the m ovem ent o f the support o f the infinitive’s event from position (a) to the realiz­ ation o f this event. T he main clause, for its part, expresses a judgem ent about or a reaction to the fact o f the infinitive event’s having acceded to existence. To is consequently used in the in­ finitive o f reaction to evoke the support o f the infinitive as char­ acterized by a disposition arising prior to the tim e o f realization o f w hat the infinitive denotes. W hat distinguishes the infinitive o f reaction from uses such as I am ready to leave, w here ready also attributes a prior disposition to the support, is simply that the characteristic denoted by the adjective o f reaction evokes both a prior and a contem poraneous disposition towards the occurrence o f an event. In this type o f use, to is intercepted at the final m om ent o f the m ovem ent it denotes, so that the adjective or m ain verb evokes not only how the person designated as the support o f the infinitive was predisposed towards the realization o f the latter’s event, but also his feelings at the tim e o f its occur­ rence.

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4 .5

T H E T O I N F I N I T I V E AS S U B J E C T

So far we have not examined the use o f the to infinitive as subject. M any examples pose no problem in the light o f the notion o f a prior position o f the support: (17)

To visit the poor is a Christian obligation.

(B. C onrad 1982: 119) (18)

To be understood in Alexandria and tolerated in Athens

was the extent o f his ambition. (B. Conrad 1982: 122) T he notions o f ‘obligation’ and ‘am bition’ both imply that the place in time w here the support is affected by the obligation or the ambition is prior to the realization o f the infinitive’s action. Similarly in (19) the conditional would signifies that not building is being envisaged as a hypothesis, as something w hich m ight be done in the future, but w hich is unadvisable in the eyes o f the speaker. (19)

N o t to build because we are short o f doctors or staff w ould be a counsel o f despair. (B. Conrad 1982: 143)

T he prospective elem ent is somewhat m ore subtle in: (20)

To fall was to die. (W eekly Times, 7 M arch 1884: 4; in Visser 1963: 258)

This sentence can nevertheless be paraphrased by ‘If someone were to fall, he w ould unquestionably die’: the to infinitive evokes a hypothetical action here as well, i.e. an action to be avoided. Such examples confirm the view o f the infinitive proposed here because they evoke its lexical content as something pros­ pective. O n the other hand, the following example implies that the support — here the speaker — has actually realized the action denoted by the infinitive:

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N o r could I foresee how m uch pleasure I was to derive ‘putting some style’ into those fatuous concoctions titled P R O G R E S S R E P O R T O N BEET . . . To read G ideon on Beet was a new literary experience. (B. C onrad 1982: 137)

As in the case o f the infinitive o f reaction, this use seems appar­ ently to contradict the hypothesis that the support o f the to in­ finitive is always situated before the place in time (to be) occupied by its event; however, w hen compared w ith the use o f the -ing form here, the contrasting expressive effects suggest an­ other interpretation: (21a)

Reading Gideon on Beet was a new literary experience.

(21b)

To read Gideon on Beet was a new literary experience.

Reading here simply evokes the realization o f the event and no more. T he to infinitive, however, has a decidedly m ore ironic effect, as if the occurrence o f the event read Gideon on Beet was

something very special, an unexpected bit o f luck or special pri­ vilege. It m ight be paraphrased as ‘having the opportunity to read Gideon on B eet’ or ‘being able (allowed) to read Gideon on B eet’. This impression o f ‘specialness’, o f contingency, o f the event’s occurrence being something w hich could not have been taken for granted, disappears in the sentence w ith -ing. Similar impressions are obtained from other examples o f this type: (22)

H e did not w ant to be alone, and had expected to find some o f his friends at the bar. To be alone seemed a continuation o f his drugged fife at the lathe. (B. Conrad 1982: 135)

H ere the person referred to did not expect to be alone at the bar. T he to infinitive thus evokes the occurrence o f an event as contingent, as something w hich m ight not have happened and w hich in fact was not expected to happen: the closest paraphrase is ‘that he should find himself alone’. T he -ing form w ould have referred m ore to the mere experience o f being alone at that m om ent than to the unexpectedness o f finding himself alone.

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T he to infinitive has m uch the same expressive effect in: (23)

Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good. (Tolkien 1968: 799)

H ere again it denotes an event whose occurrence was unex­ pected. Likewise, example (24) suggests that the event was un­ foreseen and therefore all the m ore outrageous: (24)

To lose his bargain through the obstinacy o f a fool, to have his patronage overlooked by a subordinate, choked

him w ith rage. (B. Conrad 1982: 140) All this points to the to infinitive as an expression o f a contin­ gent occurrence. It lends the infinitive event, in contrast w ith the -ing form, an aura o f ‘iffiness’ w hich brings to m ind the possibility that this event m ight well not have occurred. T he following unusual use o f to provides further confirmation o f this: (25)

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were m om ents at w hich she showed herself, in the glass over the m an­ tel, a face positively pale w ith the irritation that had brought her to the point o f going away w ithout sight o f him. If she continued to wait it was really, in a m an­ ner, that she m ight not add the shame o f fear, o f indi­ vidual, personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel the street, to feel the room , to feel the table-cloth and the centerpiece and the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at least, o f neither shirking nor lying. (James 1902: 9)

I believe it is possible to propose an explanation for the intuitive feeling one gets that the -ing form w ould be somewhat inappro­ priate here: the author is describing a person w ho is groping for anything w hich will reassure her before she meets her angry father and the m ere fact that she is able to perceive objects w hich are familiar to her —w hen she feels so disoriented that she

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can take nothing for granted — is what gives her the sense that she is neither shirking nor lying. These perceptions are thus con­ ceived as contingent, as open to non-occurrence, since they are not being treated as normal, as being taken for granted, even though they did take place in actual fact. This type o f impression reminds one once again o f the ‘infini­ tive o f result’: (26)

H e managed to get free.

H ere also the infinitive evokes an event w hich actually occurred but w hich very well m ight not have. It has been seen that the impression o f ‘subsequent actualization’ arising here results from intercepting the m ovem ent signified by to at its final instant, at the point where the infinitive event is actualized. T he to infini­ tive in sentences such as (21)—(25) above seems to involve the same mechanism o f representation. There is one m ajor difference how ever betw een the above sentences and the infinitive o f result. In (26), the main verb manage denotes w hat led up to the realization o f the infinitive or, better, w hat put the support in a position to realize it. Manage thus expresses notionally the m ovem ent o f approach signified by to from a position before the event up to the point where its realization begins. This is not the case how ever w hen the to infinitive is subject: although one still understands that the infini­ tive event is realized, th ere is n o th in g in such uses wh ic h specifies w hat leads up to its realization. T he expressive effects noted in (21)—(25) involve impressions o f contingency, unexpec­ tedness, good or bad luck — in short, notions suggesting unforeseen events. To represent a happening as unforeseeable, how ever — and herein lies the explanation for the use o f the infinitive w ith to — one must necessarily evoke a position before its occurrence: the stretch o f time leading up to it must be evoked as containing no prior indication that it was going to occur. This use appears therefore to depict the support o f the infinitive as entering into the actualization phase o f an event from a prior position in time w hen nothing seemed to be mili­ tating in favour o f its occurrence. T he resulting impression is consequently that the occurrence was unexpected, happened fortuitously.

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T he type o f use under discussion is therefore exactly parallel to the infinitive o f result, except that w hat has brought the sup­ port to realize the happening denoted by the infinitive’s lexeme is left undefined. As w ith the infinitive o f result, the infinitive w ith to evokes the actualization o f an event, but one w hich ap­ pears fortuitous, contingent. This ‘actualization’ sense o f the in­ finitive arises in both uses from a late interception o f the m ovem ent signified by to, at the instant w here its m ovem ent o f approach reaches its term, the starting point o f the event repre­ sented by means o f the infinitive. Thanks to this way o f analysing the m ovem ent o f to, the ex­ pressive effects o f unexpectedness, good or bad luck and the like produced by the to infinitive in these cases can be accounted for. M oreover, the same basis o f explanation — analysing the m ove­ m ent o f to — can also explain the difference betw een this use o f the infinitive as subject and that discussed above in examples (17)-(20). In these sentences, it will be recalled, the event is seen as prospective, as a subsequent potential, a m eaning that arises from intercepting the m ovem ent o f to before it reaches the infi­ nitival lexem e’s place in time. T hat is to say, as subject, the to infinitive can denote tw o types o f contingent events correspond­ ing to tw o different interceptions o f to: PROSPECTIVE (POTENTIAL) CONTINGENT EVENT:

To be understood in Alexandria and tolerated in Athens was the height o f his ambition. ACTUALIZATION OF A CONTINGENT EVENT:

To read Gideon on Beet was a new literary experience.

T he expression o f a prospective contingent event is the product o f an early interception, and that o f an actualized contingent event is produced by a final interception. T he difference in m eaning betw een the tw o coincides therefore w ith the distinc­ tion already made betw een to infinitives evoking their event as a ‘subsequent potentiality’ and those evoking it as a ‘subsequent actualization’. This is, for example, the distinction betw een the infinitive o f purpose and the infinitive o f result. English is not alone in being able to evoke a mental position before an event w hich has actually occurred m oreover. In (27) the verb in the subjunctive (the m ood o f the non-real) also

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denotes a happening w hich in actual fact has already taken place: (27)

Je regrette qu’il soit venu.

H ow ever, as w ith the English infinitive, the speaker is not m ere­ ly accepting this happening as a fact but is passing judgem ent on the appropriateness o f its occurrence: the verb regretter here ex­ presses a ‘critical idea’ through w hich the happening etre venu is ‘view ed’ (Guillaume 1971a: 218). In such uses, therefore, the speaker mentally situates a real event in the field o f the merely possible so that he can express a judgem ent, not on the reality o f the happening, but on the appropriateness o f its occurrence (p. 219): judging w hether something real is appropriate for existence or not involves imagining w hat things w ould be like w ithout its existence, and so leads to taking a mental position before its existence w here both existence and non-existence are seen as possible. T he subjunctive in French allows the speaker to adopt this purely imaginary position from w hich he can give a verdict on w hether a happening should have occurred or not. English seems to obtain m uch the same effect w ith the to infinitive as subject. In the type o f sentence under consideration there is always an elem ent o f critical appreciation o f the appro­ priateness o f the infinitive event. In (21) this critical idea is ex­ pressed by a new literary experience, w hich expresses a (feigned) favourable posture with respect to ‘reading Gideon on Beet’. In (22) the suggestion is that the occurrence o f being alone at the bar was not only unexpected but undesirable. (23) above expresses a favourable reaction to the fact that the speaker happened to find friendship where he was not seeking it. And so on w ith all the other examples o f this construction w hich have been found. Before m oving on to the next section, it is perhaps w orth pointing out that the analysis just presented also allows us to handle certain uses related to the infinitive o f reaction where the nexus betw een the infinitive and the main clause is m uch looser than in the canonical cases discussed above in (11)—(16): (28)

I was stunned, to see him lose.

(29)

John was embarrassed, to be in a place like that. (Bolinger 1984: 55, 52)

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THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

Bolinger distinguishes these uses from those such as I was glad to see her there, w here there is no comm a pause, by calling the latter ‘projective’ and the form er ‘reactive’ — (28), for example, is para­ phrased by ‘I was stunned by his losing’. In both projective and reactive uses, however, the infinitive expresses an actualized con­ tingent event and the impression o f contingency implies a refer­ ence to a position in tim e w hen the infinitive’s event was not a reality (i.e. before its actualization), so that the term ‘reactive’ is no m ore appropriate here than in the canonical uses o f the ‘in­ finitive o f reaction’ as a description o f the m eaning o f the to infinitive. T he difference betw een these tw o senses lies simply in the fact that loosening the nexus allows the main clause to be interpreted m ore as a consequence o f the actualization o f the contingent event expressed by the infinitive than as a judgem ent on the appropriateness o f its occurrence.

4 .6 T H E T O I N F I N I T I V E I N E X C L A M A T I O N S D E N O T IN G A REALIZED EV EN T T he observations above also provide a means o f analysing uses such as (2), (5) and (6), w hich have not yet been treated expli­ citly. Exclamatory sentences such as these express a critical judgem ent o f the occurrence o f the happening w hich the infini­ tive denotes, and so present it as something w hich should or could have been avoided. T he exact nature o f the beforeness evoked by to varies how ever according to the context. In (2), for instance, the idea o f unmanly seems to correspond to w hat caused the person represented as the support o f the in­ finitive to perform the action o f treating a w om an badly, and the sentence suggests that the speaker did not expect such unm anly behaviour from the person he is addressing. (5), on the other hand, seems to call into question the existence o f any conditions w hich could have led to someone leaving Pa unattended: the speaker cannot understand how anyone could have done such a thing. (6) is very similar: given the opinion that Sir Jee had o f himself, he could not understand what could lead someone to speak to him in such a way. T he constant elem ent underlying this type o f exclamation is therefore the expression o f surprise, indignation, etc. at the hap-

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pening denoted by the infinitive having been realized. In many contexts the impression one gets is that this happening is not something the speaker w ould have expected, but all such uses express a critical judgem ent on the person represented as the infinitive’s support having gone ahead and done something w hen, in the speaker’s opinion, he should not have. To is re­ quired w ith the infinitive in order to represent this m ovem ent from a before-position w hen the event was not yet realized - at w hich point, according to the speaker, it could and perhaps should have been prevented from occurring — to an after-posi­ tion corresponding to its actual realization. T he to infinitive ex­ presses therefore a subsequent actualization in this use. W hat leads up to this actualization is not specified, the very fact o f something having led to it constituting that w hich is judged ne­ gatively by the speaker.

4 .7

TH E BARE INFINITIVE IN EX CLA M A TION S

T he bare infinitive is used to produce a very different effect from that o f the to infinitive in exclamations, as can be seen in (3) above and in: (30)

I say anything disrespectful o f D r Keen? H eaven forbid!

(Dickens 1861; in Jespersen 1940: 328) (31)

Colonel Brandon give m e a living! Can it be possible? (Austen 1811: 284; in Jespersen 1940: 328)

R egarding this use, Jespersen observes that the bare infinitive occurs only in exclamations ‘in w hich an idea is brushed aside as impossible by means o f an (exaggerated) interrogative intonation . . . ’ (p. 328). Kruisinga and Erades (1960: 363) note some­ thing very similar: It is evident that the plain stem serves to express that the idea o f the activity suggested by the verb is rejected by the speaker as incredible, an outrage, an impossibility, or an absurdity. There is an obvious parallel, therefore, betw een the bare infini­ tive’s use in exclamations and that after need and dare. In both

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cases, the realization o f the infinitive event is ‘rejected’ or ‘brushed aside’, i.e. viewed from the point o f view o f factors favouring its non-occurrence rather than its occurrence. Even m ore significant is the impression alluded to by both gramma­ rians that the infinitive evokes a mere possibility here — some­ thing w hich is brushed aside as ‘impossible’, something w hich the speaker cannot conceive as actually existing. Independently o f any other verb, the bare infinitive here expresses an event as a possibility, a rejected possibility. W ith the modals, the effect o f representing the support in its place in tim e (past or non-past) as receiving the incidence o f the potential event is to evoke actualization as dependent on the conditions o f possibility, probability, etc., expressed by the modal. H ere, on the other hand, no place in tim e w ith its con­ ditions governing the potential actualization is represented be­ cause the infinitive is not dependent on a modal auxiliary. As a consequence, representing the support as receiving the incidence o f a purely potential event necessarily evokes the latter as non­ actual, but specifies no conditions governing its actualization, simply suggesting that it is ‘impossible’ or ‘brushing it aside’. O f course, this leaves the expressive m ovem ent o f the sentence and other elements in the context free play to imply various reasons for rejecting the event as actualizable. T he bare infinitive in exclamations evokes therefore an in­ cidence o f the infinitive’s event to its support w hich can only be represented as potential since the speaker feels it has little or no chance o f being real, o f finding a place in real time. T he to infinitive is not used because one is not situating the incidence o f the infinitive’s event to its support as com ing after some other position in tim e at w hich the support is also represented, as was the case in (1) above. In the use w ith the bare infinitive, the speaker simply wishes to represent the attributing o f the infini­ tive’s event to a support in tim e as outside the field o f possibility (hence necessarily non-actual).

4 .8

TH E BARE INFINITIVE A FTER R A T H E R

T H A N AND SO O N E R

THAN

T he use just discussed bears a relation to the occurrence o f the

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bare infinitive after the expressions rather than and sooner than: (32)

H e paid the fine rather than appeal to a higher court. (Q uirk et al. 1985: 1003)

Quirk et ah point out quite rightly that the matrix clause ‘expresses the subject’s preference’ here but they fail to see the implications o f this for the infinitive. If the matrix clause expresses the course o f action preferred by the subject o f the verb, however, then the infinitive must express a possibility which is rejected, as in the exclamative sentences treated above. This is very m uch in keeping moreover with the nature o f comparative clauses, since, as has been seen in the discussion o f need and dare, they contain an inherent non-assertiveness. This negative element can be felt in (32) above in the fact that this sentence implies that he did not appeal to a higher court even though he could have. The bare infinitive ex­ presses a possibility which was not realized in this use and is there­ fore conceived in the same way as it is with the modal auxiliaries, as a mere potential, except for the fact that no particular form o f potentiality is attributed to it.

4 .9 T H E I N F I N I T I V E A N D T H E C A T E G O R Y OF P E R S O N T he role o f generalized person in the infinitive thus allows a deeper understanding o f those uses o f the infinitive w here it is not in syntactic relation w ith another verb and o f the reasons w hy to is used in certain o f these uses but not in others. It leads us m oreover to draw a further im portant distinction, w hich makes the analysis o f the infinitive’s relation to person even m ore precise. T he distinction in question is that betw een two representations o f person w hich appear to be involved in all of the uses o f the infinitive: the virtual, generalized intra-verbal person o f the infinitive, on the one hand, and the actual, often rank-specified extra-verbal person evoked by the context, on the other. In a case such as (1) above, the place in tim e o f the extra-verbal person I is prior to that o f the representation o f person contained w ithin the infinitive be. This calls for the use o f to. In W hat! M e know the answer!, in contrast, both the extra­

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THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

verbal person evoked by me and the generalized person incor­ porated w ithin the infinitive know as the support o f a merely potential know ing are situated in the present, w hich explains the absence o f to and the fact that this sentence can be used to call into question the possibility that the speaker has the knowledge at the present m om ent. This way o f regarding the infinitive’s relation to person can be applied m oreover to the uses already examined in Chapters Two and Three, w here this form is related to another verb in the sentence and thus provides a coherent explanation covering all the uses o f both versions o f the infinitive by means o f a single principle o f analysis. For example, in I want to go, it has been argued that because the w anting is conceived as preceding the going, to is required to situate the latter event beyond the for­ mer. N ow , however, we can propose that the infinitive event w ith its internal spatial support (intra-verbal person) must be conceived as situated at a point in tim e beyond that at w hich its explicit actual support is located. This is indeed the case here, w here the support o f the infinitive is made explicit by the pro­ noun I. T he fact that I is the subject o f the verb want autom at­ ically situates it in tim e before the event go: the first person is involved in the actualization phase o f want in the present but he is not yet represented as involved in going. T he same thing is true o f I want him to go. H ere the support o f the infinitive (spe­ cified by him) is involved in the wanting not as its subject but as its direct object. H ow ever this still situates ‘him ’ in the present w ith respect to want — he is the object o f a desire right now whereas he is not yet involved as the agent o f the event go. H ere, then, not only is there no contradiction betw een the for­ m er analysis and the m ore complete view o f the infinitive taking into account its generalized person, but the latter actually gives a fuller understanding o f the posteriorizing m ovem ent o f to by specifying its starting point and its end-point: the positions occu­ pied by the tw o representations o f person involved. T he principle just formulated can quite obviously be applied to the infinitive o f purpose: (33)

H e struggled to get free.

H ere also the support o f the infinitive is identified w ith that o f

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the finite verb and so is depicted as having realized the action o f struggling w ith the intention o f perform ing the infinitive event. Since his involvem ent in struggling does not necessarily imply that he will actually get free, it simply places him before the getting free w hich he aims to realize. From the point o f view o f its spatial support, w e can under­ stand as well the use o f the to infinitive as what Jespersen calls the ‘infinitive o f specification’ (1940: 262ff). Thus one can say the sentence in (34) even if the person referred to never gets to handle the case: (34)

H e is qualified to handle this case.

T he same is true o f free, Jit, apt, able, etc., all o f w hich denote a quality in the person designated as the support w hich predisposes him to realize the action referred to by the infinitive in a certain way. That is, the support o f the finite verb is seen at a point in tim e from w hich the realization o f the infinitive event by the person o f the infinitive is view ed as a subsequent potential. T he type o f substantive w hich occurs w ith the infinitive of specification also gives a clear view o f the relation betw een the person outside and inside the infinitive event, for example: (35)

A chance to put them into practice. (Scheurweghs 1959: 215)

Friedrich (1961: 34—7) gives the following list o f substantives fol­ lowed by the infinitive with to: attempt, decision, right, willingness, inclination, need, request, permission, promise, order, wish, petition, desire, goodness, impudence, cheek, impulse, endeavour, inspiration, ability, possi­ bility, chance, occasion, obligation, determination, aim, propensity, the wit, tendency, temptation, hesitation, refusal, reluctance, failure. These various

substantives evoke a state or quality which disposes the support to perform an action (willingness, desire, impudence, ability; etc.), an ac­ tion he performs which prevents or could prevent him from realiz­ ing it (hesitation, refusal, reluctance, etc.), something he needs in order to realize it (right, permission), a circumstance in which he finds himself which favours something’s occurrence (chance, occasion), etc. —all o f which evoke a situation existing before the infinitive event, and so imply a reference to a prior position o f the support. In­

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deed, for all cases w here the to infinitive evokes ‘subsequent potentiality’ the support is necessarily seen or implied to be situ­ ated in tim e prior to the event. T he ‘subsequent actualization’ sense o f the to infinitive also involves this double position o f the support: person as support o f the event o f the finite verb is represented as prior in tim e to person as support o f the infinitive’s event. Thus in (36), a typical example o f the infinitive o f result, managed evokes all the efforts w hich the subject had to make in order to attain the result and so situates the third-person support in tim e before — and all the way up to - the point at w hich ‘getting free’ is actualized. (36)

H e managed to get free.

M uch the same thing can be said o f the to infinitive denoting something w hich is actualized as a consequence o f causation (cause, force, occasion, get, order, tell), assistance (help), discovery (find), daring, etc. In all cases, then, w hether the infinitive evokes the possible or the real actualization o f its event, the per­ son o f the to infinitive is referred to tw o positions in tim e, one before, one coinciding w ith this event’s place in time. As for the bare infinitive, it can be shown that in all o f its uses it implies —as it does in exclamations —that the extra-verbal support’s place in time cannot be conceived as a before-position w ith respect to the infinitive’s event. In cases w here the bare infinitive evokes the actualization o f its event, as in (37), the use o f the bare infinitive incident directly to the finite verb implies that the agent w ho realizes the latter is directly and simulta­ neously involved in the action o f the infinitive. (37)

Mrs A rthur Goldberg . . . paints professionally and helps sponsor the Associated Artists’ Gallery in the Dis­ trict o f Columbia.

Thus, as w e saw above, the is to sponsor it in part by below one understands that out his helping at the same was addressing the letters, strumental in the realization

only way to help sponsor something contributing m oney oneself. In (38) the support o f the finite verb carried tim e as the support o f the infinitive w hence the m eaning o f being in­ o f this action.

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(38)

139

I helped him address the letters.

In I made him eat his potatoes, similarly, w here the realizer o f eat is ‘him ’ only, the person referred to by the direct object is repre­ sented as being involved in eating at the same tim e during w hich he is the object o f the causation denoted by make: since make evokes the idea o f ‘producing an effect’, it is impossible to conceive the m aking as being under way before the effect has started com ing into existence. W hereas the uses just cited all represent cases in w hich the extra-verbal support’s place in time coincides w ith that o f the intra-infinitival support involved in the actual realization o f what the infinitive denotes, w hat has been called ‘coincident actualiza­ tion’, w ith the modals how ever the extra-infinitival support is represented as receiving the incidence o f the infinitive’s poten­ tiality in time (‘coincident potentiality’). Thus in He can sing the incidence o f ‘sing’ to ‘h e’ exists as a potential in the present: the person referred to possesses at the present m om ent the capacity o f realizing this action. In H e will sing tomorrow, ‘singing tom or­ ro w ’ is in relation w ith the subject in the present, but only as a probable potential: ‘h e’ is represented as subject to certain condi­ tions in the present (his time-table, his ow n will) w hich make his singing tom orrow predictable: in a way, one could say that right now he is represented as a ‘probable tom orrow -singer’. T he view that the infinitive involves a generalized repre­ sentation o f person as the support necessary to conceive the lexi­ cal content as an event thus in no way contradicts anything said previously. O n the contrary, the expressive effects observed in the uses examined in Chapters Two and Three appear as necess­ ary consequences o f the incidence o f the infinitive’s event, w ith its intra-verbal ‘general person’, to its extra-verbal spatial support in time.

4.10

C O N C LU SIO N

G uillaume’s notion o f a representation o f person as a support w ithin the infinitive has proven to be extremely fruitful for ex­ plaining the uses o f this form discussed above. This hypothesis is a consequence o f his search for the inherent necessities o f hum an

140

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

thought, following his dictum that ‘a theory, the ultimate in un­ derstanding, must satisfy the following formal conditions: it must confront the facts from the position o f an antagonist, o f course, but it must itself be based not on fact but on some absolute and inevitable exigency’ (1984: 23). T he necessity o f representing both the tim e contained in an event (event time) and the time containing the event (universe time, its tem poral support) has long been recognized, at least implicitly, in the distinction be­ tw een aspect and time-sphere. It is proposed here that the need to represent a spatial support in order to get a m ental repre­ sentation o f an event is another such requirem ent: how can one conceive an event as som ething taking place in tim e w ithout also conceiving at least virtually someone or something realizing it (or undergoing its realization, as in the passive)?33 From this postulate about the general nature o f the verb based on our ex­ perience o f happenings, one can deduce the necessary presence o f a spatial support in the mental representation signified by the infinitive. T he morphological and syntactic characteristics o f the infinitive (no personal endings, no subject) lead one to conclude that this support has the form o f a generalized person w hich does not vary in rank but w hich encompasses all possible ordinal persons. This in turn explains w hy the infinitive can evoke both the wide range o f all possible realizers (as in To visit the poor is a Christian obligation) and the narrowing dow n o f this range to one particular spatial support (for instance, to the speaker as in O h to be in England . . . ). Postulating the presence o f a generalized person in the infinitive whose position in tim e as support o f the infinitive’s event is either coincident or subsequent to another position o f this same person, at w hich it is often represented as support o f some other event, thus leads to a m ore profound comprehension o f the motives underlying the use o f to.

Five

The infinitive in the English verb system

5.1 T H E B A R E I N F I N I T I V E ’S P L A C E I N T H E SYSTEM A N D TH E R O L E OF TO In previous psychomechanical studies, the infinitive has been defined as a quasi-nominal form o f the verb evoking its event as not yet realized (cf. Hirtle 1975: 20—1). Its place in the system o f the quasi-nominal forms and its relation to the present and past participles is diagrammed as: work (to) «.-----------work

ing

worked

This diagram can now be made m ore precise insofar as the in­ finitive is concerned. T he first point to be made is that to is not, stricdy speaking, part o f the infinitive: the latter is a verb, whereas to is a dema­ terialized preposition whose use is called for in certain contexts because o f the m eaning it expresses.34 T he infinitive as such in English, that whose grammatical m eaning is generated by the mental mechanisms involved in the system o f the verb, corre­ sponds to the so-called ‘bare infinitive’.

142

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

As for the grammatical meaning o f the bare infinitive, the fol­ lowing remarks can be made. First o f all, unlike the -ing form, the infinitive always produces a representation o f an event seen as a whole, i.e. either as a single instant o f a state-like event or as a m ovem ent from the beginning limit to the end o f an action-like one (cf. Hirtle 1988). As can be observed from the contrast be­ tw een I saw him swim/swimming across the river, the infinitive re­ fuses a partial view o f an action-like event as intercepted midway betw een the beginning and the end. This does not entail how ­ ever, as Hirtle 1975 seems to suggest, that the infinitive must represent an event as referred to some point in time prior to its realization: if such were the case, it w ould be impossible to ex­ plain w hy to is needed in some contexts but not in others. Tak­ ing into account the notion o f support, the most satisfactory definition that can be given o f the English bare infinitive in the present state o f our knowledge is therefore as follows: the bare infinitive is a non-finite verb form that provides for the incidence o f its event to a support through all the instants o f time required to actualize the complete lexical content o f this event. Since the intra­ verbal support o f the infinitive is a general virtual person, the speaker must also conceive the actual support to which the infini­ tive’s event is incident and the relation in time between the virtual and actual persons whenever he wants to use this verb form. The conditions under which the potential significate o f the in­ finitive is exploited in discourse have been seen to vary according to certain parameters, such as use with lexical verb vs use with auxiliary and use with do vs use with the modal auxiliaries. W ith lexical verbs, the infinitive evokes its event as incident to a support which receives the incidence o f the lexical verb’s event in the same time-stretch as that required to represent the infinitive’s actualiza­ tion. This produces the effect o f a ‘coincident actualization’ ob­ served in sentences such as I saw him swim across the river, w hich can be depicted as: swim

saw PAST

NON-PAST

THE IN FINITIVE IN THE ENGLIS H VERB SYSTEM

143

W ith auxiliaries, the connection betw een the infinitive and the verb w ith w hich it is in syntactic relation is m uch m ore inti­ mate: the auxiliaries used w ith the infinitive do not merely evoke some other event whose support coincides in tim e w ith that o f the infinitive — they qualify the very incidence o f the infinitive’s event to its extra-verbal support, as actual (do auxil­ iary) or potential (the modals). The way do does this is to represent its support as receiving the incidence o f the actualization o f the infinitive event in the timestretch expressed by the auxiliary. For H e did swim across the river. swim

did NON-PAST

PAST

This involves the virtual person o f the infinitive occupying the same position(s) in time as the actual person w hich specifies its rank in the auxiliary, and so to is not necessary. As for the modals, they represent their support as receiving the incidence o f the potentiality o f the infinitive’s event in the tim e-stretch w hich they express. For H e could swim across the river. swim

I

I could PAST

NON-PAST

This also involves the intra-infinitival virtual person occupying the same position in time as the actual person w hich specifies its rank contained in the auxiliary, but here the virtual person is conceived as the support o f a potentiality and not o f an actualiz­ ation. T he coincidence betw een the tw o representations o f per-

144

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

son (in passing, b o th are representations o f the same extralinguistic entity) is w hat calls for the use o f the bare infinitive. T he bare infinitive no longer suffices, however, w hen its ac­ tual spatial support is represented as som ehow before the time corresponding to the actualization o f the infinitive’s event. In this case to is required in order to represent the relation in time betw een the tw o positions o f person involved here, one before the tim e o f the infinitive’s event, the other at the beginning o f its actualization. T he to used before the infinitive was very clear­ ly a preposition w hen first employed in this function; in fact, it governed the dative case o f the infinitive. Indeed, it is not sur­ prising that a m em ber o f this particular grammatical category should have been brought into play here. T he role o f the prepo­ sition has been described in the following way: T he preposition can therefore be quite accurately defined as the type o f w ord w hich is already predestined in tongue to intervene in discourse betw een tw o words separated by an interval w hich is not covered by a mechanism o f incidence in operation . . . It is the type o f w ord that comes into play w henever the mechanism o f incidence betw een tw o parts o f the sentence is left in abeyance. As long as the mechanism o f incidence o f one w ord to the other works, there is no need for a preposition. T he latter comes in only w hen this mechanism is no longer operative, w hen it fails to apply, and the role o f the preposition is then to make up for the inoperative m ovem ent o f incidence . . . (Guillaume 1971b: 154-5) Thus whereas the bare infinitive allows for the incidence o f its event to a support situated w ithin the confines o f event time, the mechanism o f incidence provided for by the verb form itself is inoperative w hen called upon express an incidence to a sup­ port situated prior to the tim e contained in the event. This ex­ plains w hy English has recourse to a preposition, a w ord whose function is to establish a relation betw een tw o words w hen no mechanism o f incidence is provided for by the words them ­ selves, in order to make the infinitive incident to a support situ­ ated outside its event time. W hat is m ore, the use o f to w ith the infinitive seems to

THE IN FINITIVE IN THE ENGLISH VERB SYSTEM

145

betoken, as w ith prepositional to, a relation involving a spatial entity: a preposition relates an elem ent conceived as a spatial entity (a substantive or pronoun) to something else. In H e drove from Toronto to N ew York, for example, the spatial entity N ew York is related to the process o f driving as the term o f the m ovem ent involved in this process. As for to in its use w ith the infinitive, it signifies a relation betw een tw o spatial entities in tim e - the non-ordinalized general person incorporated in the infinitive and the often-ordinalized extra-verbal person o f which the infinitive is predicated in a particular use. T hrough its lexical m eaning o f a m ovem ent from point A to point B, to allows one to represent tw o positions o f the infinitive event’s spatial support in time —one before, and one at the beginning o f the infinitive’s event - w hich correspond to the tw o representations o f person — extra- and intra-infinitival —involved in any use o f the infinitive. Thus to is used w ith the infinitive both for the lexical and grammatical m eaning it brings into the context: its lexical m eaning o f an approach to the infinitive event from a position before is called for by the relative position in tim e o f the extrainfinitival spatial support w ith respect to the position occupied by non-ordinalized person at the beginning o f the infinitive’s event; its grammatical m eaning as an establisher o f a relation w here the inherent mechanism o f incidence is inoperative is called for by the fact that the event cannot otherwise be repre­ sented as incident to the extra-infinitival support since the latter is not already situated at the beginning o f the event, i.e. is not w ithin the confines o f event time. T he view o f to proposed here allows one, furtherm ore, to account for the tw o m ajor uses o f the to infinitive. As has been shown above, the m ovem ent denoted by to can be intercepted at some point before its term to evoke a support at some remove from the position occupied by the representation o f person at the beginning o f the infinitive’s event, thus giving rise to the impression w hich we have called ‘subsequent potentiality’ (He struggled to get free). O n the other hand, it can also be allowed to run its course, carrying the support up to the point o f actualiza­ tion o f the infinitive’s event, w hich produces the ‘subsequent actualization’ sense (He managed to get free). Consequently the tw o uses o f the to infinitive arise from representing the extra­ verbal support either as separated from the actualization o f w hat

146

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

the verb denotes by a lapse o f tim e or as attaining the place in time w here this actualization takes place. This can be diag­ ram m ed in the following way for the early interception: get free struggled | to

and as follows for the final one: get free managed to

T he to infinitive, therefore, is not strictly speaking a verb but rather a syntactic construction: it involves tw o parts, the infini­ tive, a verbal form w hich evokes a representation o f an event produced by means o f the verb system, and to, a preposition w hich indicates a relationship betw een the place in tim e where the support has to be situated to begin actualizing the infinitive’s event (occupied by the representation o f non-ordinalized person incorporated w ithin the infinitive) and some other prior place in tim e w hich the support is also represented as occupying or hav­ ing occupied previous to the realization o f this event. Thus only the infinitive is part o f the verbal system, and to is an element brought in from outside this system to provide for incidence to a support seen as occupying a place in tim e before the beginning o f the event.

5 .2

G EN ER A LIZED P E R SO N

Besides contributing to a deeper comprehension o f the function o f to, this study has also led to a fuller understanding o f the role o f the category o f person in the infinitive. It is proposed here that the infinitive is not totally devoid o f a representation o f

THE IN FINITIVE IN THE ENGLIS H VERB SYSTEM

147

person but contains a ‘generalized person’ w hich represents a support that has not yet been defined ordinally w ith respect to the speech situation as first, second or third. This, as we have seen, explains the impossibility o f the infinitive in *To snow would be pleasant as against its possible use in I want it to snow: if the generalized person o f the infinitive o f w eather verbs is not specified as referring to the only support w ith w hich the notion denoted by these verbs is conceivable, namely it, then one feels a possible reference to any o f the ordinal persons w hich can be referred to by the infinitive’s generalized person ( 'y o u , ‘m e’, etc.), and so the sentence does not make sense. T he presence o f generalized person in the infinitive also ex­ plains how this verb form can be ‘w ithout person or num ber’ and yet have ‘a reference to some subject’ (Brown 1884: 336—7): the fact that the infinitive does contain a support gives rise to the impression that the event is referred to a ‘potential subject’, that is, to what w ould have been the subject had the verb been finite. O n the other hand, no personal endings are found here simply because no ordinal rank has yet been represented at this early stage o f verb formation, a fact w hich gives us some insight into the reality underlying the term ‘non-finite’. Finally, all these remarks tend to confirm the view that the infinitive is the most virtual form in the system o f the verb (cf. Guillaume 1964: 267). Like the other quasi-nominal forms o f the verb, it has as a support a representation o f person not yet differentiated ordinally, as we have just seen. Unlike the past participle and the -ing form, however, the infinitive does not evoke its event as partially or completely realized at the point in time w here it is referred to its support, and so the incidence of the event to the support can itself be seen as a m ere possibility. Granted the abstractness o f the representations involved here, it is small w onder that some grammarians doubt the existence of an infinitive in English (cf. Erades 1956).

5 .3

PROSPECTS

This study has o f course raised new problem s, and thereby opened up avenues for further investigation. M ost immediate am ong these is that o f the relation betw een the representation o f

148

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

time in the bare infinitive and in the non-past indicative. T he synapsis o f sign has already been pointed out by H irde (1967: 21), but the reason suggested for it — namely, that the infinitive has the m eaning ‘event tim e not yet actualized’ and the non-past indicative implies ‘event in the not yet stretch o f universe tim e’ will have to be re-examined. T he findings o f the present study, as well as those o f G ordon (1982: 55—6) and N ovara-C urat (1983: 161—2), suggest that the notion o f ‘not yet tim e’ will have to be reinterpreted. Indeed, it is reassuring to note that although these studies involve different problems w ithin the verb, they all seem to be converging in so far as the view o f the relation betw een event time and universe tim e (time containing the event) is concerned. All this may throw light as well on the diachronic evolution both o f the non-past indicative and o f the infinitive. Historical evidence shows that the so-called ‘present’ tense could formerly be used m uch m ore freely to refer to the future than is now the case. According to Visser (1966: 669), it is around the time o f the passage from O ld to M iddle English that one witnesses the beginning o f this ‘shrinkage’ o f the non-past, w hich loses m ore and m ore ground to the constructions w ith will and shall. At the same tim e as the non-past is undergoing this shift, the use o f to w ith the infinitive is being extended beyond its concrete direc­ tional sense to cover all cases o f subsequent potentiality and sub­ sequent actualization, for w hich the bare infinitive had formerly been adequate: ‘ . . . the use o f the to infinitive in the place o f the bare or plain infinitive increased rapidly during the late O ld English and early M iddle English periods’ (Visser 1966: 948). T he bare infinitive thus seems to have shifted out o f the field o f the future or the subsequent in a similar way to, and at the same time as, the present-tense form. A clearer knowledge o f this re­ markable coincidence will perhaps explain w hy the signs for these tw o grammatical forms fall into synapsis later on. Even m ore important, it may throw fight on certain differences be­ tw een English and other Germanic languages (e.g. Germ an and Dutch). Besides the question o f the history o f the infinitive, the pres­ ent study renews the long-standing problem o f the relation be­ tw een the infinitive and the -ing form. Indeed, it is perhaps not overly optimistic to think that the view o f the relation betw een

TH E IN FINITIVE IN THE ENGLIS H VERB SYSTEM

149

an event and its support put forward here may be applicable, mutatis mutandis , to the -ing form and may even throw light on the vexed question o f gerund vs participle. Granted the syste­ matic nature o f language, the results o f such a study as this can­ not but reflect on the quasi-nominal forms o f the verb as a whole.

Notes

1 2

3

4 5

6 7

Cf. also Borkin 1973, Riddle 1975, Freed 1979, Givon 1980, Rudanko 1984, and especially Kilby 1984, Andersson 1985, Wierzbicka 1988 and Dirven 1989. Other factors conditioning syntax are rhetorical considerations such as emphasis and balance, processing factors which set limits to length and complexity of structures, and of course, ultimately, the way the speaker views the experience he wants to express and the message he intends to convey to the hearer. This view has inspired transformational analyses such as that of Huddleston (1971: 165), who finds it ‘reasonable to postulate the introduction of to even where the surface structure has a plain stem . . . when the presence or absence of to (in surface struc­ ture) depends on the voice of the matrix sentence’, as with make and see. In these cases, to is introduced into the complement but is subsequently deleted if passivization does not take place. This treatment of to obviously presupposes that it is a mere ruleregulated formal element with no meaning at all. Cf. Chomsky 1957: 100. Such examples, it might be remarked, provide further evidence that it is meaning, not something inherent in the physical sign itself, which enables us to identify and group together signs as manifestations of the same linguistic category. For a more detailed discussion of these notions, see Hirtle 1967: 5ff. Thus even verbs such as pretend and claim, which have been pro­ posed as counter-examples to this type of impression (cf. Riddle 1975: 470; Mair 1990: 102), imply a before/after relation be­ tween the events of the matrix verb and the to infinitive. R e-

NOTES

151

garding the first verb, Rudanko (1984: 470) points out that in She pretended to have been a spy the individual denoted by the subject ‘has full control over what she may pretend to be or to do’. We have seen that the control idea involves conceiving the matrix event as conditioning, i.e. logically before, the realization of the infinitive’s. As for claim, Ransom (1986: 150) notes that whereas when used with a that-clause it denotes merely an act of communication and does not suggest doubt about the truth of the complement, when followed by to + infinitive it means ‘want to make believe’ and the to infinitive ‘signals a dubitable attitude towards this’ (He claimed to be a Scot, although his accent was Lancastrian). The idea of an effort (denoted by claim) to ob­ tain recognition of a quality or title (denoted by the infinitive) obviously implies that recognition has not yet been given when the claiming is initiated, i.e. that the claiming comes before the infinitive event, at least logically. Other apparent counter-examples, such as the so-called ‘infini­ tive of reaction’ and the use of the to infinitive after know (cf. Dixon 1984: 589), will be discussed in Sections 2.6 and 4.4. 8 Unless the speaker is making a pun or a play on words, in which case he plays on two or more ways of actualizing the potential meaning. 9 If sponsor in (13) is interpreted in a broader sense than that of ‘to contribute money to’ then to might perhaps be possible. 10 We will see the significance of this a bit further on. 11 Cf. also Poutsma 1923: 39; Schibsbye 1965: 33; Bolinger 1974: 66 .

12

13

14

There may well be a letter in Walpole’s voluminous correspond­ ence commenting on this phenomenon, but since White unfor­ tunately gives no reference it has not been possible to verify our interpretation of the sentence. There may also be uses such as (85)—(87) where the to infinitive construction expresses a resulting impression which is false. Thus while the import of They arranged things so that the vase was heard to fall seems to be that the sound of the vase falling was only simulated, the same sentence with the bare infinitive would sug­ gest a situation where the vase actually fell. Attested data of the bare infinitive being used to create this type of expressive effect must be found however before the existence of such a contrast can be affirmed. It has been brought to my attention however that a sentence such as the following seems quite normal: He was no longer seen to cross the street.

152

15

16

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

While this sort of use has not been observed in the corpus it is easily explainable in the light of the hypothesis put forward here. The fact of not seeing someone cross the street for a long period of time (cf. no longer) can serve as the basis for inferring that ‘he didn’t cross that street any more’ and consequently for suggesting knowledge about the subject ‘he’: such a sentence might suggest that the person spoken about had become too feeble or sick to go out any more. Whereas not perceiving something on a particular occasion does not prove anything, not perceiving it for a long time could be the basis for asserting something about the subject. The impressions observed in this area of usage coincide therefore with the nature of the passive voice itself. The passive can be characterized as notionally resultative, in that the idea of ‘some­ one being seen’ is notionally the result of ‘someone seeing him’. In other words, the situation of being acted upon (passivity) is the result of the action of something else (an agent’s activity), and not vice versa. (I owe this observation to Roch Valin.) This can be illustrated by the fact that there are no passives without corresponding active structures, whereas there is a whole group of verbs, the intransitives, which can be used in the active voice but not in the passive (cf. He arrived at 10:00). That is to say, activity can be conceived without passivity, but the passive has as a prior condition of conceivability the active. It is therefore no accident that English should use the past participle, which sig­ nifies a view of the event from a point after its realization, to express the passive. Note also the tendency of the passive to express not only the result of activity (i.e. passivity), but also the result phase of the event (i.e. temporal transcendence). In this respect compare: (a)

I was lifting off the runway.

(b)

I was lifted off the runway.

The -ing represents activity and incompletion, while the passive structure evokes not only passivity but also completion (resultativity). While it goes somewhat beyond the scope of this study, it is interesting to note that in Borkin’s article on to be deletion (1973: 45—6) she feels that whereas the adjective construction in I find this chair uncomfortable implies that ‘I must have experienced the chair as uncomfortable’, the sentence with to be would be used ‘if I have run consumer reaction tests myself and am repor­ ting on my findings’. The to infinitive, as seen above, evokes the knowledge of the chair being uncomfortable as coming after the

NO T E S

153

finding, thus suggesting it is the result of a test, whereas without the to infinitive this resultative impression is not present. This also allows us to make sense of something which Wierzbicka (1988: 136) notes but does not explain — the fact that whereas He found her to be intelligent seems quite normal, He found her to be Mexican does not. The reason is simply this: it is far less likely for the statement ‘She is Mexican’ to be a conclusion which one is led to draw from dealing with a person, it being the sort of information one is usually told outright by the person concerned or by someone else. If however Mexican is interpreted as evoking a type of personality which one is led to see in someone by their behaviour, then the to infinitive seems less strange: He found her to be very Mexican. 17

Thus Mair’s (1990: 200) suggestion that in the context below: Until that point there were teachers around. I haven’t heard any reports about their witnessing any breakages, but ones I knew to be around with whom I’ve spoken didn’t seem to notice anything like that.

18 19

the semantic value of the V + NP + to infinitive construction (= ‘subjective judgment’) is abandoned and the infinitive is used for structural reasons only (i.e. due to the relative clause working against a that-clause after know) is not entirely accurate. While it is true that the relative-clause structure presents the head noun as the direct object of know and thereby favours the infinitive, the meaning expressed by the sentence above does not violate the semantics of the know + VP + to infinitive construction nonethe­ less, since the speaker’s knowledge is being invoked here as the condition allowing him to attribute ‘being around’ to certain teachers. Cf. Wierzbicka 1988 and 1975, Comrie 1985, Haiman 1985, Shibatani 1976, Baron 1974, Fodor 1970. The use of ready-made logical categories also poses problems for the analysis of lexical vs periphrastic causatives. Wierzbicka’s comments on the difference between English make + bare infini­ tive and the French faire faire construction in uses of the type he metallurgiste a fait fondre le metal (1988: 244) carry the implication that the English lexical causative (The metal-worker melted the met­ al), which is at the top of the binding hierarchy, can signify indirect causation and be appropriate where make melt, which is supposed to be an ‘indirect causative’ in English, is not. This goes to show how misleading the term ‘indirect’ can be.

154

20

21

22

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

Up until the end of the eighteenth century both these construc­ tions were used however (cf. Visser 1973: 2256, 2261). We shall also see below that make can occasionally be used with the to infinitive when a special semantic effect is sought. This is why cause can sometimes be the equivalent of order, a use where the temporal gap between the cause and the effect is manifest, and substitution by make impossible: (a)

The King and Queen meanwhile caused to be erected on the spot where he fell a beautiful statue inscribed, ‘Happy Sa­ ragossa! Rejoice that here is buried one who is the glory of martyrs’. (Walsh 1940: 173)

(b)

The Government of India shall maintain or cause to be maintained books and records adequate to identify the goods and services financed for agreed projects pursuant to para­ graphs 1(b) and 1(c) of Article 2 of the Agreement . . . (BUC H22 1980 7)

Note that this sentence could also be interpreted in the same way as (165) above, as can be seen if it is put in the non-past: That obliges him to have everything finished earlier.

23

24

25

Whether oblige denotes the state of obligation which exists before having everything finished or the operation which leads up to having everything finished, it still evokes antecedent causality and so to must be used. The suggestion that get evokes causation in a phase prior to that evoked by have is reminiscent of Hirtle 1975: 39ff, where the notional priority of get with regard to have is clearly brought out. Indeed the ‘control’ sense of have here appears to be linked with its ‘possession’ sense in depicting the relation between subject and object. Compare: (a)

Which [Ambition or Love] shall we let to triumph for our­ selves? (Thackeray 1853: 461; in Jespersen 1940: 294)

(b)

These visions will not let them sleep, will not let their tongues to cease from bitterness. (Galsworthy 1907: 270; in Poutsma 1923: 47)

While Cotte’s conclusions are quite pertinent, some of his obser­ vations need to be nuanced however. To begin with, (217b) is

NO T E S

155

not an unacceptable utterance at all, if what the speaker wants to say is ‘I wasn’t the one who let him do it, so it must have been someone else’. Note however that even here the speaker is saying that he did not stand back and allow realization of the infinitive event while the person was under his responsibility: in other words, let still signifies permitting as ‘not intervening’. A second point to be made is that the more common interpretation of I didn't allow him to do it (cf. (217a)) would be ‘I prevented him from doing it’: since the to infinitive can express a result after allow in the affirmative, it comes as no surprise that the expressive effect of ‘preventing the achievement of a result’ should be possible in the negative. In order to express the meaning attributed to (217a) by Cotte, allow would have to be stressed. As for (216a—b), it is quite exact to observe that (216b) is inconceivable. This comes through even more clearly if a more specific verb is substituted for do: *1 let him use my car last night but he didn’t use it.

26

As is the case for (217a), it should be pointed out in addition that allow would have to be stressed in Cotte’s interpretation of (216a). This dematerialization can be seen in the fact that the unit let fall cannot be used in the concrete sense in which let . . . fall is used in He let the ladderfall to the ground: (a) *He let fall the ladder to the ground. Conversely, let sense: (b)

...

fall is not appropriate in the figurative

He let fall a further heavy hint.

(c) *He let a further heavy hint fall. 27

Two ‘borderline’ uses have been found, where one might have expected the evocation of a permissive condition but where the writer seems to have been influenced by the fact that the infini­ tive’s event is actually occurring at the moment of speech: (a)

From January, Japan will suspend an agreement that lets nationals of these countries enter Japan without a visa for ninety days as tourists. (The Economist, 3 December 1988: 38)

(b)

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce to you the Bank of Montreal MasterCard card issued especially for Optimist International, a new and exciting benefit of your

156

THE ENGLIS H IN FINITIVE

membership in Optimist International . . . This new card lets us support new programs because we receive a continuing contribution each time the card is used to make a purchase. (advertising flyer) 28

Thus the argument that to is an auxiliary because it can serve as a prop for negation and only an auxiliary can perform this func­ tion runs counter to the data. This can be seen from uses with the subjunctive and the present participle where there is negation but no auxiliary: (a)

They suggested that he not leave so early.

(b)

Anyone not wearing a disguise will not be allowed into the party.

As for the argument based on adverb position, it would presum­ ably oblige one to also classify the preposition about as an auxil­ iary verb, in the light of uses such as: (c)

How about all taking part in the play?

(d)

How about really recommending it?

The third argument from VP ellipsis curiously neglects the fact that whereas the other auxiliaries can be preceded directly by a subject, To cannot: (e)

I will. I have. I am. I do.

(f) * I to. 29 30

31 32 33 34

That is, between matter (the infinitive) and form (the modal). This is not to say that they must evoke potentialities when used in non-assertive contexts, as need and dare can continue to be conceived as actualities even in negatives and questions, just like the great majority of English verbs. In this case they are con­ strued with the to infinitive as in the examples given in the table from Quirk et al. 1985 at the beginning of this section. Quirk et al. 1985, for instance, does not even mention this use. I owe this observation to Roch Valin (personal communication). Besides Brown 1884: 337 (Section 4.3), see also Erades 1956: 441 for observations supporting this view. One indication of this, mentioned in Chapter 1, is the existence of the ‘split infinitive’, where an adverb is inserted immediately after to.

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Index

ability 137 able 137

actualization coincident actualization 89, 95, 115, 138-9, 142-3 subsequent actualization 89, 95,115, 122, 129-30, 132, 133, 138-9, 145-6, 148 actual meaning 8, 15, 16, 23, 28, 35, 47, 89 allow 83, 85—6, 88 ambiguous sentences 20—1 apt 137 ask 19, 80 assume 32 attempt 19, 137 autonomous syntax 4—6 believe 31, 50—1 bid 81-3

coincident actualization, cf ac­ tualization coincident potentiality, cf potentiality command 19 communicative —functional ap­ proach 6—7 complementation 1—4 ‘control’ 17—18, 150-1 convince 19 dare 93, 99, 102-4, 107-14, 133-

4, 156 desire 19, 137 discern 33 discover 32 do auxiliary 91—3, 143 endeavour 19 exclamations 5, 95, 117—18, 122, 132-4

causatives 5-6, 22, 56-79, 153 cause 56-66, 73, 138, 154 chance 137 claim 150-1

cognitive grammar 8—9 coincidence 17—18, 22, 28, 29— 30, 89-90, 115

feel 30, 31 find 47-8, 152-3 fit 137 force 66-7, 73, 138

formal grammar 9—10 free 137

IN D E X

get 69-71, 73, 138, 154

grammatical meaning 8, 15, 141, 145 guess 51 have 14, 18, 22-3, 69-72 hear 30, 37, 40-3, 44, 46-7, 151 help 14, 23-29, 61, 66, 138-9 hesitation 137 how 104-6 impudence 137 incidence 119—21, 134 external incidence 120—1 internal incidence 120 infer 32

infinitive infinitive infinitive infinitive

marker 12, 13 of purpose, cf purpose of reaction, cf reaction of result, cf result

know 48-56, 153 let 83-8, 154-6 lexeme 119 lexical meaning 104, 119—20, 145 make 56-66, 67, 68, 69, 73-9,

80, 83, 139, 150, 153, 154 manage 20, 129, 138, 146

model auxiliaries 4—5, 93—9, 103-4, 117, 135, 143-4 mood 130-1 need 19-20, 99-102, 103-4,

107, 133-4, 156 notice 30 oblige 67-8, 73, 154 observe 30, 34 occasion 68-9, 137 order 19, 69-70, 137 ought 114

167

passive 37-47, 55, 76-9, 83, 150, 152 perceive 36 perception verbs 5, 29-46, 8990, 151-2 permission 137 permit 84, 88 person 118—23 extra-verbal person 135—40, 142-5 generalized person 122, 135— 6, 142-5, 146-7 intra-verbal person 135—40, 142-5 persuade 19 potential meaning 8, 15—21, 23, 89, 151 potentiality 94-7, 143 coincident potentiality 94—5, 98, 103, 114-15, 139, 143-4 subsequent potentiality 89, 114-15, 130, 137-8, 145, 148 predication 119—23 preposition 12—13, 16-17, 115, 141, 144-5, 156 presentative 11 pretend 150-1 prove 32 psychomechanics of language 9, 15-16, 20 qualified 137

quasi-nominal 141, 147, 149 reaction 123-5, 127, 131-2 refusal 137 reluctance 137 require 19 result 13, 20 right 137 13-14, 29-47, 54, 142, 150, 151-2

168

IN D E X

split infinitive 10, 156 struggle 136-7

subject function 126-31 subjunctive 57, 100, 130-1, 156 subsequence 16-18, 22, 28—9, 88-9, 115 subsequent actualization, cf ac­ tualization subsequent potentiality, cf potentiality support 119-23, 135-40, 142-7 tell 19 tense 148 thank 80—1

think 31, 50—1 try 19-20 understand 32

voice 35, 37-47, 55, 76-9, 150, 152 want 19, 136 watch 29, 32, 36, 41, 89-90

weather verbs 122, 147 why 106-7 willingness 137 wish 19, 137